Sound + Vision | The Blog

  • Ella Washington’s THE BALLAD OF ARTHUR MCDUFFIE

    by Frank Shankly
    In 1979, Arthur McDuffie, a Black insurance salesman and Marine Lance Corporal, was beaten to death by four Miami police officers after a traffic s...

  • LaVerne Tripp & The Family’s JESUS LOVES COWBOYS

    by Frank Shankly
    LaVerne Tripp started singing in front of crowds when he was just two and a half years old.  When he was a student, he sang at local churches and e...

  • R.I.P. Marianne Faithfull

    by Frank Shankly
    From the AP: One of the first songs written by Jagger and Keith Richards, the melancholy “As Tears Go By,” was her breakthrough hit when released ...

  • TRUTH's WOULD YOU BELIEVE IN ME

    by Frank Shankly
    TRUTH is an acronym for Trust, Receive, Unchangeable True Happiness in Jesus.  Founded by John Roger Breland in 1971, the group performed its first...

  • Anthony Grant On Music And Growing Up In The '80s.

    by Frank Shankly
    Most days I’d play outside until the sun went down. My friends and I would find things to keep ourselves occupied throughout the day. The Bronx in ...

  • Rusell Rogers On Discovering College Radio

    by Frank Shankly
    "When I was a teenager in the late 1970’s, FM radio was still a new thing. If you bought a new car people would ask you what kind of radio it had a...

  • Tim Buckwalter On The Perfect Record Store

    by Frank Shankly
    I’ve always been a 45s guy.My first memory of records is sitting on my bedroom floor, at age three, endlessly playing Peter Pan Read-A-Long 7” disk...

  • Deirdre White on Bands That Start with B

    by Frank Shankly
    People don’t believe me when I tell them that the Bay City Rollers were my first rock concert. It was 1977,  I was still a kid, but my older sister...

  • Mark Taylor on Siouxsie + The Banshee's SPELLBOUND

    by Frank Shankly
    A vinyl record can be thought of as more than just a distribution device for music; it is a fetish used in ritualistic fashion, and some effort is ...

  • Catherine Haley Epstein On The Scent of Records

    by Frank Shankly
    It’s 95 degrees outside and my son and I are unpacking a surprise '80s set of 45s I bought last month. I ask him what the 80s records smelled like,...

  • Matthew Kelso on I THINK I LOVE YOU

    by Frank Shankly
    In 2004, I attended a very rainy Bonnaroo music festival. I was in college and had already been a musician and DJ for years. I was there to see l...

  • Jim Winters on GOT TO BE REAL

    by Frank Shankly
    From seventh grade through ninth grade, 1977-1980, we lived at the White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico. The closest town was Las Cruce...