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Featured News
Patti Smith Upcoming Tour for 50th Anniversary of Horses
By Harvey Kubernik “Horses was like the first cannon blast in a war – frightening and disorienting. I mean, she was so unlike the FM radio terrain in every way. She was literate, aggress
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Featured Articles
Chasing the White Light: Lou Reed, the Telepathic Secretary and Metal Machine Music
By David Holzer Fifty years ago, Lou Reed released Transformer. In among “Walk on the Wild Side,” “Make Up” and “Vicious,” cuts that would launch a cartoon Rock N Roll Animal pers
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Bert Jansch – 1943-2011
by Alan Bisbort
“The Death of Bert Jansch” sounds like the name of a traditional folk song that Jansch himself might have resurrected on one of his early solo albums. Sadly, this imaginary song came true on October 5, 2011, when the legendary musician—whom Neil Young likened to “Jimi Hendrix on the acoustic guitar” and whose cross-generational influence is admitted by the likes of Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, Donovan, Johnny Marr, Joanna Newsom, Beth Orton and Devendra Banhart—died at age 67 after a battle with cancer. (more…)
The Phantom Brothers – Germany’s Wildest Beat Group
An Interview with Olgerd Wokock by Mike Stax, with Anja Dixson
(This article was originally published in UGLY THINGS #24)

The Phantom Brothers, 1965. L to R: Rudi Kruger, Horst Kruger, Olgerd Wokock, Wolfgang Wokock (Photo by Astrid Kirchherr)
In my personal Sixties rock’n'roll pantheon Germany’s Phantom Brothers occupy a special place near the very top of the heap. I actually became a fan of the group before I’d even heard a note of their music, my enthusiasm based entirely on a set of photos in the German pictorial book, The Beat Age. Surly and stone-faced, decked out in leather and stripes, and with a lead singer with hair down past his shoulders—in early 1965!—they exuded style and attitude. And the live shots, with that singer shaking maracas and tambourine together, and a guitar player windmilling his arm Townshend-style, suggested a sound that couldn’t be anything less than flat-out WILD, man.