miles davis
The 50 Best Albums of 1972
Last year, when helping assemble SPIN‘s 50 Best Albums of 1971, I wondered if that year could have been popular music’s absolute peak. Now I’m asking myself that same question all over again. As I built a spreadsheet for 1972, gathering our writers’ votes alongside my own weird choices, I was once again struck by how many bronze-cast classics came out that year: LPs from David Bowie, Al Green, Aretha Franklin, The Allman Brothers Band, Yes, Stevie Wonder, Roxy Music, and on and on. Run down basically every genre – glam, soul, prog, art rock, Southern rock, metal, folk, MPB — and you’ll find the very best shit, whether eternally famous or sadly obscure. (My poor spreadsheet, swelling each day, originally had hundreds of worthy records. But you have to start chopping eventually.) Here’s wher...
5 Albums I Can’t Live Without: Bob Guccione, Jr
Name Bob Guccione Jr. Best known for Depends who you ask! My beloved girlfriend thinks I’m a menace. Come to think of it, so did my father, actually. Um, come to think of it… Well, other than that, starting this magazine! And publishing WONDERLUST (wonderlusttravel.com). And generally pissing people off, if I’m being honest. Current city Milford, PA Really want to be in Italy. Always Italy. Where I would be careful not to do any more than the average Italian does. To be culturally sensitive, you know? Excited about Watching SPIN climb out of its decade long inertia and become kick-ass and meaningful again, in that order. My current music collection has a lot of World music, classical and jazz, which are the three kinds of music I listen to most. I have no country and almost no rap (ex...
The Reissue Section: Summer 2021
From deep jazz spiritualism to big dumb rock, Summer 2021 has been chockfull of archival releases of old favorites, obscure discoveries and newly unearthed recordings that will appeal to a vast array of music fans with ice cream money to burn. I keep hearing about how the CD era is dead and all that stuff. But this current cache of archival titles continues to prove the compact disc is very much a format that continues to bring joy and happiness to a large swath of the music-buying public. So yes, CD players still belong in cars, you savages! Stone Temple PilotsTiny Music…Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop Deluxe Edition (Atlantic/Rhino) Third albums are the ones that tend to cement an act’s career in a way that either helps them ascend to new heights or sink like a stone. For Stone Temple P...
The 50 Best Live Albums of the 1970s
The concert industry exploded in the 1970s, and the live album, a stopgap project once reserved for only the biggest artists, became a compulsory ritual and a pivotal moment for many artists. Live albums captured legendarily loud bands like The Who and The Ramones in their natural element. Once obscure regional acts like Bob Seger, KISS and Cheap Trick exploded into the mainstream with live albums. The Band, The Stooges, and Velvet Underground put their final gigs on vinyl. Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young (as his ongoing archive series shows), and Jackson Browne recorded entire sets of new songs onstage. The Grateful Dead released several official live albums (and continue to do so) that only made fans want to bootleg shows on their own more. With the 50th anniversary of a landmark live album, Th...
The 13 Best Make-Out Songs
Making out is timeless — kisses rev up the romantic mood and stir the spirit, if not the loins. Make-out songs contain multitudes too, like the one playing when you sync with that special someone, or the tune that nano-second sucks you right back to high school when you held your teenage crush in a mind-blowing embrace. Perchance you remember making out on the disco floor when the wild tsunami rush of sensuality and freedom hit you, lights strobed and “J’taime” raced your heartbeat as Jane Birkin breathily simulated pleasure to Serge’s song written in homage to his affair with Brigitte Bardot. They had their song. We have “our” song — the one that’s seared into memory and flesh. Or the song you’ll play tonight when the mood lights dim. In homage to these classic make-out tunes, one must me...
Last Miles: Our 1991 Miles Davis Interview
A version of this story originally appeared in the December 1991 issue of SPIN. We’ve republished it on what would have been Miles Davis’ 95th birthday. I loved watching Harry Reasoner’s expression on 60 Minutes when Miles told him he felt there was nothing wrong with being a pimp: “Women liked me,” rasped the controversial, iconoclastic, horn-playing genius. Oh, Miles! I could hear women gasping from coast to coast! This man did speak his mind. I decided I finally had to get in touch with this gravelly-voiced musical messenger and get him to talk to me, even though the word was he wasn’t talking to anybody (not even to promote his just-released autobiography, Miles, for Simon and Schuster). And he is oh so difficult—authentic and stubborn. Good enough for me; I had to try. Mile...
