For a few hours on Friday, September 9th, the Jefferson Market Public Library, at 6th Avenue and W. 10th, will be Mecca for literary hipsters of every stripe.

At 8pm that night, the incomparable Nick Tosches will be holding forth, doing a reading in celebration of his new book, Save...

It was the Fall of 1978 and I was standing in the audience, waiting for the marvelous British Punk band, The Buzzcocks, to play their first ever New York show.

Before we go a sentence further, I must tell you, I am truly a mild-mannered fella, benignly boisterous at...

Back in the 1990s, I did a lot of traveling for my gig as an independent record promoter. My destination was always the same, a radio station. I'd fly into a market to either close a deal or maintain one. Having spent my whole life digging radio, these...

Well, I can't help myself. This is (mostly) about The Who... again!


The Who performed just once (well, twice ... there were early and late shows -- 8 and 10:30pm -- back then) in Central Park, August 7th, 1968 as part of what was called The Schaefer Festival (Yes, the...

As he lay in his Cardiac ICU room, with his doctor hovering over him, my father opened his eyes, looked up at his gerontologist and declared in a James Cagney delivery...

"I'm bustin' out of this joint, doc..."

He closed his eyes and was gone about 15 seconds later.

"So, have you decided what your opening line will be?" asks Dan Reed.

Why, yes, I have, my hostess with the mostest! Here goes...

Over 170 million people tune into an NPR station every day. If my wife isn't in the car with me, I'm not one of them.

It's...

From what I gather, boys go through a major Best Friends Forever stage just before and during puberty. Back in 1965, my see-every-day bestest friend was Andy.

We were inseparable. We shared a very twisted, and looking back, almost surreal Monty Python/Devo sense of humor, about a decade before those...

So, I have this friend...

He was a two-or-three-times-a-week customer at the record store I ran in the East Village back the 1980s (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/binky-philips/keith-richards-amy-carter_b_780434.html). Back in the day, as we all seem to say nowadays, he was a voracious purchaser of "collectibles." You know, the stuff old school...

You will notice that in each of the three somewhat disparate encounters relayed below, I am sitting down when most of the action occurs.

Back in the balmy Fall of 1971, a friend of mine, actually pretty much my older brother/mentor at the time, John, had some...


When the line-up for the Woodstock Music & Art Fair was announced... I'm guessing in late April/early May of 1969, there they were... my heroes, The Who... playing Saturday, August 17th.


I looked at the rest of the bills for the three days and concluded that, while this was one...

WARNING: As the title suggests, this week's column careens like a pinball.

One dear old friend is the connective tissue, a true candidate for Reader's Digest's Most Unforgettable Person I Ever Met. I have literally dozens of tales about him, and no doubt I'll eventually get to them, too. For...

I met Desmond in 1968. He grew up in George Carlin's White Harlem aka Morningside Heights, a sliver of a neighborhood on the upper west side of Manhattan. Des is the other guitarist in the current version of my old band, The Planets. 100% New York Irish, handsome, blond, he's...

Wednesday morning, March 28, 1967. After weeks of fevered anticipation, in the middle of our Easter vacation, me and my pals, Benjy and Anthony, got on the uptown 5 train in Brooklyn, off to Murray The K's latest holiday extravaganza, Music In The Fifth Dimension at the RKO Radio Theater on...

What can I tell ya ... I was just never into Metal.


Some of my all-time favorite bands pioneered Metal (Who, Zep, Hendrix, some Sab), but, Metal Metal ... nahhh ... just way too Spinal Tap for me.


Until the Summer of 1984.


That July/August/September, every Wednesday and Thursday, my...

Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 1987, I went down to Deland, Florida with my then-girlfriend-now-wife, Susan, to meet my future father-in-law, Colonel Bill Ceely, for the first time. The man had been a test pilot in the Army Air Corps during World War II. He actually knew and hung out...

On Thursday, September 28, 1972, David Bowie was finally playing New York. 
Yes, Ziggy Stardust was performing at Carnegie Hall with his Spider From Mars.
It was only his third gig in America and wow, the hype was heavy!

My gang of fellow Brooklyn Anglophile Import Album...

At the end of January 1991, after more than a decade running record stores in the East Village and more than two decades playing clubs, I was hired by Bill and Rose McGathy, the heaviest hitters in independent rock radio record promotion for every major record label. I had called...

Towards the end of the summer of 1974, an old pal called me that I hadn't heard from for awhile. His apartment in Queens had been broken into and his guitar and amp had been stolen. And, since I owned about six guitars, he was hoping that I'd lend him...

So, how/why is this story about a store closing Christmas-y?

Well, the greatest Christmas present of my childhood came from Manny's Music Store.

During Thanksgiving break in 1966, my Dad took me to Manny's to try out a Fender Telecaster. This was akin to letting a 13 year old try...

Billy was dead!

Jesus, the New York Dolls hadn't even signed a record contract yet and already one of them had died!

Given the trajectory of the New York Dolls' career and personal histories, Billy Murcia's death by misadventure was sadly fitting.

Being a groundbreaker is almost always a thankless...