On Run-DMC, Village Voice, 1985.Īs I wrote in my 50th birthday tribute to him in 2007 (“ A Love From Outer Space: Why Greg Tate Matters”), his work sent me down many rabbit holes. Many of those early essays were collected in the essential 1992 collection Fly Boy in the Buttermilk. It was through Tate’s literary reviews or name droppings that I discovered the writing of William Gibson ( Neuromancer), Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo. Though he celebrated Blackness, his tastes weren’t limited by the colorline. Tate dissected mostly what he loved about pop culture, be it electric Miles, the films of Julie Dash or the comedy of Richard Pryor, and presented it to the world in a language that was playful and profound. Thankfully, the Village Voice editors didn’t try to rein him in or chain him to one genre.
Though Tate wrote primarily about music, his range of cultural interests was expansive as he also explored art, films, books, paintings and other artistic avenues being paved by various creatives of color. From that day on I searched for Tate’s byline every Wednesday morning to see what the brother had to say, what jewels he was going to drop, what wisdom he was going to pass on. Though I’d long wanted to be a writer, I’d always assumed that novels and short stories would be my specialty, but Greg Tate’s work offered a different path. It was a critique that was so eye-opening, funky fresh and inspiring, I felt like a kid who just watched a rocket blast towards the moon and decided he wanted to be an astronaut. Not that there weren’t a few Black music journalists/critics before him (LeRoi Jones, Phyl Garland) whose work I admired, but that morning I bought the Village Voice, opened to the record review section and read a piece on George Clinton (“Beyond the Zone of the Zero Funkativity”), that sent me soaring. Debasing the Stax Records legacy.In 1982, my introduction to the music writing of future mentor and friend Greg Tate was a black magic moment that caused me to celebrate as his words literally changed my young life. I Thank You, Hayes & Porter, as performed by Sam & Dave. The second piece of Canadiana desecrated by the Garden State purveyors of garden-variety pop rock, that neither pops nor rocks.Ħ. This ‘free world’ musically speaking, is more like a police state run by a strong-armed military junta.ħ. The presence of Willy Deville’s voice means fewer verses for JBJĨ. Among the ‘better’ song on this list, only in the sense that it’s better to have testicular cancer than say, lung. Save the Last Dance for Me, Pomus and Shuman. Since his battle with the IRS, legendary Willie Nelson seems contractually obligated to work with just about anyone, and unfortunately this includes the Bon Jovi frontman.ĩ. Here, in no particular order, because the pork rendering plant stench emanating from each, is indistinguishable from the other, is our 10 Worst Bon Jovi Cover Songs of All Time: 10.
Luckily for all concerned, these are so popular that nobody would mistake them for Bon Jovi originals and mislead any future generations. Since their own music wasn’t bad enough, here is Bon Jovi doing what they do best-spilling their own REO Speedwagon / Journey / Three Dog Night / Springsteen-lite effluent on some of the world’s most well-beloved songs. Worse still, would be someone actually COVERING a Bon Jovi song, but to the best of our knowledge, the likelihood of this occurring is about as probable as a meteor the size of the state of New Jersey striking the earth. The only thing worse than an actual Bon Jovi song, however, is Jon Bon Jovi doing a version of someone else’s, automatically better original.