Chuck Eddy | |
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Born | Detroit, Michigan | November 26, 1960
Occupation | Music journalist |
Years active | mid-1980s-present |
Chuck Eddy (born November 26, 1960) is an American music journalist.
Chuck Eddy was born in Detroit, Michigan. After starting his journalism career with The Village Voice and Creem , where he published one of the first national interviews with the Beastie Boys [1] in the mid-1980s, Eddy then wrote for Rolling Stone , Spin , Entertainment Weekly and other national and local publications. He has authored four books: Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe, The Accidental Evolution of Rock and Roll, Rock and Roll Always Forgets: A Quarter Century of Music Criticism, and Terminated for Reasons of Taste: Other Ways to Hear Essential and Inessential Music.
In 1999 he was hired as the music editor at The Village Voice, where he served for seven years. After being terminated on grounds of "taste" upon Village Voice Media's merger with New Times in 2006, [2] [3] he briefly wrote a thrice-weekly heavy metal blog for MTV's URGE and a monthly page of capsule CD reviews in Harp called "The Last Roundup". From 2006 to 2007, he worked as a senior editor for Billboard magazine. Eddy currently freelances from Austin, Texas.
He has published book chapters in several anthologies, including The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll (Random House, 1992); Spin Alternative Record Guide (Vintage, 1995); Stars Don’t Stand Still in the Sky: Music And Myth (NYU Press, 1999); Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth (Feral House, 2001); Creem: America’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll Magazine (Collins, 2007); and 1000 Songs To Change Your Life (Time Out, 2008.)
Beastie Boys were an American rap rock group from New York City, formed in 1981. The group was composed of Michael "Mike D" Diamond, Adam "MCA" Yauch, and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz. Beastie Boys were formed out of members of experimental hardcore punk band the Young Aborigines in 1978, with Diamond as vocalist, Jeremy Shatan on bass guitar, John Berry on guitar, and Kate Schellenbach on drums. When Shatan left in 1981, Yauch replaced him on bass and the band changed their name to Beastie Boys. Berry left shortly thereafter and was replaced by Horovitz.
Leslie Conway "Lester" Bangs was an American music journalist, critic, author, and musician. He wrote for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines, and was known for his leading influence in rock music criticism. The music critic Jim DeRogatis called him "America's greatest rock critic".
Public Enemy is an American hip hop group formed by Chuck D and Flavor Flav on Long Island, New York, in 1985. The group rose to prominence for their political messages including subjects such as American racism and the American media. Their debut album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, was released in 1987 to critical acclaim, and their second album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988), was the first hip hop album to top The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics' poll. Their next three albums, Fear of a Black Planet (1990), Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black (1991) and Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age (1994), were also well received. The group has since released twelve more studio albums, including the soundtrack to the 1998 sports-drama film He Got Game and a collaborative album with Paris, Rebirth of a Nation (2006).
Bad Brains are an American rock band formed in Washington, D.C. in 1976. Originally a jazz fusion band under the name Mind Power, they are widely regarded as pioneers of hardcore punk, though the band's members have objected to the use of this term to describe their music. They are also an adept reggae band, while later recordings featured elements of other genres like funk, heavy metal, hip hop, and soul. Rolling Stone magazine called them "the mother of all black hard-rock bands", and they have been cited as a seminal influence to numerous subgenres of heavy metal, including thrash/speed metal, alternative metal, funk metal and rap/nu metal. Bad Brains are followers of the Rastafari movement.
Paul's Boutique is the second studio album by American hip hop group Beastie Boys, released on July 25, 1989, by Capitol Records. Produced by the Dust Brothers, the album is composed almost entirely from samples, and was recorded over two years at Matt Dike's apartment and the Record Plant in Los Angeles.
Pyromania is the third studio album by English rock band Def Leppard, released on 20 January 1983 through Vertigo Records in UK and Europe and through Mercury Records in the US. The first album to feature guitarist Phil Collen who replaced founding member Pete Willis, Pyromania was produced by Robert John "Mutt" Lange. The album was a shift away from the band's traditional heavy metal roots toward a more radio-friendly sound, finding massive mainstream success. Pyromania charted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, No. 4 on the Canadian RPM Album chart and No. 18 on the UK Albums Chart. Selling over ten million copies in the US, it has been certified diamond by the RIAA.
Check Your Head is the third studio album by American rap rock group Beastie Boys, released by Grand Royal and Capitol Records on April 21, 1992. Three years elapsed between the releases of the band's second studio album Paul's Boutique and Check Your Head, which was recorded at the G-Son Studios in Atwater Village in 1991 under the guidance of producer Mario Caldato Jr., the group's third producer in as many albums. Less sample-heavy than their previous records, the album features instrumental contributions from all three members: Adam Horovitz on guitar, Adam Yauch on bass guitar, and Mike Diamond on drums.
Robert Thomas Christgau is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became an early proponent of musical movements such as hip hop, riot grrrl, and the import of African popular music in the West. Christgau spent 37 years as the chief music critic and senior editor for The Village Voice, during which time he created and oversaw the annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. He has also covered popular music for Esquire, Creem, Newsday, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Billboard, NPR, Blender, and MSN Music, and was a visiting arts teacher at New York University. CNN senior writer Jamie Allen has called Christgau "the E. F. Hutton of the music world – when he talks, people listen."
Creem is a monthly American music magazine, based in Detroit, whose main print run lasted from 1969 to 1989. It billed itself as "America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine." It was first published in March 1969 by Barry Kramer and founding editor Tony Reay. Influential critic Lester Bangs served as the magazine's editor from 1971 to 1976. It suspended production in 1989 but attained a short-lived renaissance in the early 1990s as a glossy tabloid. In June 2022, Creem was relaunched as a digital archive, website and weekly newsletter, and quarterly print edition.
Ill Communication is the fourth studio album by American hip-hop group Beastie Boys, released by Grand Royal Records on May 31, 1994. Co-produced by Beastie Boys and Mario Caldato, Jr., it is among the band's most varied releases, drawing from hip hop, punk rock, jazz, and funk, and continues their trend away from sampling and towards live instruments, which began with their previous release, Check Your Head (1992). The album features musical contributions from Money Mark, Eric Bobo and Amery "AWOL" Smith, and vocal contributions from Q-Tip and Biz Markie. Beastie Boys were influenced by Miles Davis's jazz rock albums On the Corner (1972) and Agharta (1975) while recording Ill Communication.
Dave Marsh is an American music critic, author, editor and radio talk show host. He was an early editor of Creem magazine, has written for various publications such as Newsday, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone, and has published numerous books about music and musicians, mostly focused on rock music. He is also a committee member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Long Cold Winter is the second studio album by American glam metal band Cinderella. It was released in July 1988 on Mercury Records.
Jeffrey Morgan is a Canadian writer and photographer who is best known for being the authorized biographer of both Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop and The Stooges.
"Rock Box" is a song by the American hip hop group Run-DMC. The song was produced by Larry Smith and Russell Simmons and released by Profile Records in March 1984. Following the popularity of their previous two singles "Hard Times" (1983) and "It's Like That" (1983), Profile Records head suggested to the producers and group that they should attempt to record an album as they already had four songs ready, and releasing a few more would not hurt them. Despite speculating low sales from the label and the group not feeling that hip hop was a genre appropriate for a full-length album, they were given an advance to start recording. This led to Run-DMC members Joseph "Run" Simmons and Darryl "DMC" McDaniels going through their rhyme book to develop new songs, one of which would become "Rock Box".
All The People Are Talkin' is the fifth studio album by country artist John Anderson. It was released in 1983 under Warner Bros. Records. Singles from it include the Number One country hit "Black Sheep" and "Let Somebody Else Drive".
The Dictators Go Girl Crazy! is the debut album by American punk rock band The Dictators. It was released in March 1975 and is considered one of the first examples of punk rock.
Alan Light is an American journalist who has been a rock critic for Rolling Stone and the editor-in-chief for Vibe,Spin, and Tracks.
Jaan Uhelszki is an American music journalist and co-founder of the music magazine Creem where she became one of the first women to work in rock journalism. She is a founding editor of Addicted to Noise and writer-at-large for print and online music and news publications. She writes, produces and is featured in music documentaries and is editor-at-large for Creem, relaunched in 2022.
Will Hermes is an American author, broadcaster, journalist and critic who has written extensively about popular music. He is a longtime contributor to Rolling Stone and to National Public Radio's All Things Considered. His work has also appeared in Spin, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Believer, GQ, Salon, Entertainment Weekly, Details, City Pages, The Windy City Times, and Option. He is the author of Love Goes To Buildings On Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever (2011), a history of the New York City music scene in the 1970s.
From Rats to Riches is a studio album by the rock band Good Rats, released in 1978.