Women of Rock – An Ode to Divergence

Upon rock legend Stevie Nicks’ recent SNL performance, watching her familiar prowess in layers of black chiffon, I became acutely aware of the divergence between her identities — female and rockstar. In the ’60s and ’70s, societal standards largely placed women on a periphery: While making inroads in the workforce, they primarily occupied subordinate positions. To be a musician however, much less a rockstar, required absolute authority to take up space and roar into the microphone, regardless of the microphone feedback that followed. Grooming, dating and eventually dumping young groupies was commonplace for the male rockstar — just look at John Oates, Elvis and Steven Tyler. With a bit of alcohol,  debauchery and womanizing became another privilege of stardom, a given, left untouched until brave women began to speak up decades later.

Interview With Art Garfunkel on His Approach to Performances, Paul Simon and More

Art Garfunkel, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, is performing at the Ithaca State Theatre tonight at 8:00p.m. Through his solo work and collaborations with Paul Simon in the famous folk rock duo Simon and Garfunkel, he has earned eight Grammys over the course of his career. Garfunkel is also an author, recently publishing What Is It All But Luminous, a book of poems, memoirs and stories. In advance of his concert, I had the pleasure of talking to Garfunkel about his love for performing, his relationship with Paul Simon and the list of artists he has on his iPod. The Sun: What made you decide to come to Ithaca on this tour? AG: I’m really interested in making a mark with campus kids.

Wavves Crash at Bailey Hall

I remember when Wavves’s King of the Beach came out in the summer of 2010. Wavves was the perfect band for me at the time: they had all the melody and fun of bratty pop-punk, but balanced snotty singalongs with trippier, psychedelic haze. They were somewhere between the critically-lauded experimental indie rock that I wanted to love, and the three-chord power-pop bands that I really did love. I thought they were the peak of careless cool. Based on their performance at Bailey Hall on April 8, they’ve lost this quality.

Kurt Vile and The Violators at the Haunt

There are few ideas that loom larger in American music legend than the concept of the rock star. A legendary figure, he exists for only one purpose in life: to see the masses swoon in appreciation of his mere appearance onstage. A band may have all the talent in the world, but without a larger than life personality leading the sonic charge and embodying the sound for a live audience, there is a good chance those good vibrations will fall on deaf ears. Many modern front men have tried to capture the animalistic energy of rock legends like Jagger, Hendrix or Mercury, and some have done it well. Is there room in rock and roll for another kind of star?