Blur and The Magic Whip

Blur on Chinese New Year 2015, with a big announcement...February 19th, which also happened to be the Chinese New Year, was a big day for music fans. Blur, second only to the Beatles as my favorite band of all time and one of the bands that has meant so much to me in my life,...

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The Rock and Roll Chemist is on Facebook

I finally bit the bullet and decided to create an official Facebook page for the Rock and Roll Chemist. The idea is certainly not to replace this blog; rather, it's to offer another platform for exposure and news updates while directing people to my latest and greatest (he says modestly) writing which will continue to be on this site. Additionally,...

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BOOK REVIEW: Jimmy Page on Jimmy Page

For someone who was as flamboyant and creative on the stage and brilliantly talented in the studio as the driving force behind one of the biggest rock bands of all time, Jimmy Page remains one of the most mysterious and least understood giants of music.   Part of it...

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BOOK REVIEW: Love Becomes a Funeral Pyre: A Biography of the Doors

Mick Wall has written several rock biographies over the years, including one that I've reviewed previously (on Led Zeppelin).  While that book was unusual in its structure and the imagined sequences sandwiched between chapters, it was also a solid overall portrait of the...

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Blogging Advice and Tips from the Rock and Roll Chemist (PART 5)

In the first four parts of this series, we discussed the nuts and bolts of effective blogging based on my experiences. These included how to get your blog off of the ground, how to produce great content, and how to network and promote yourself. Those were very specific, process-based...

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BOOK REVIEW: Some Fun Tonight! The Backstage Story of How the Beatles Rocked America: The Historic Tours of 1964-1966

Volume 1: 1964Volume 2: 1965 & 1966The Beatles as a live band have always gotten a bit of short shrift when the history of rock music and the band itself are both discussed. The myth (and it is just that, a myth) is that they were a lousy live band who couldn't hear themselves...

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To PhD or Not to PhD? (PART 3)

I've spent the first two parts of this series discussing the pros and cons of getting a PhD in chemistry/science and choosing this field as a career. However, when looking back at what I've written, I find the overall focus tended to be more on the negative and/or detrimental aspects. While there certainly is good reason to feel this way and though...

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BOOK REVIEW: The Longest Cocktail Party

Apple Corps. Perhaps no other record label is as legendary in rock history, and much of this is down to whose label it was. However, a huge part of it is also the chaos that ensued when the Beatles tried to establish a multimedia empire in the idealistic swirl of the late 1960s,...

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The New England Patriots: Super Bowl Champions Again!

Incredible. Absolutely incredible. That was, hands down, one of the best football games I've EVER seen in a lifetime of watching football, and I've seen a lot of games. When Seattle's Jermaine Kearse made that crazy bobbling catch on his back late in the game, I went white as...

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