Music

When the Gaias were murdered, Mississippi lost one of the finest guitarists in a generation and a well-loved daughter, sister and friend. Decades later, the slayings still haunt the Delta.

After years of being one of those people who used the term as a derogatory catch-all, I realized that music that falls under the label can, and often does, help me in unexpected ways.

Talking about the Seventies, the inside-baseball debate over sci-fi vs. SF, and who's carrying the torch of sci-fi music today with the author of Strange Stars.

Searching for where I belong, I find myself cobbling together a sort of mongrel Judaism—half-remembered and syncretic and porous and contradictory and all mine.

David Byrne's first solo album post-Talking Heads helped me come to terms with the languages I lost growing up as a mixed-race kid. 

On Gregory Crewdson's photograph "Untitled (Beer Dream)," the cover art for Yo La Tengo's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out. 

Leonard Cohen's decision to pursue music as a career certainly proved a good one—for him and for us—but I'm still curious about what we lost when he gave up writing fiction.

The author of the new Jann Wenner biography Sticky Fingers on writing a book that angers its subject, the influence and legacy of Rolling Stone, and the narcissism of Baby Boomers.

Songwriter Jim Steinman found his muse in the performer—and, forty years ago, they released their iconic, operatic rock album, Bat Out of Hell.