Nerdy Needs

vintage archives of Prince being talked about as a talented hooper on the Bryant Junior High School basketball team.

Every statistic in the recorded music business is pointing down except for streaming and, amazingly, vinyl.

  In a musical career that has spanned 36 years over 5 decades, Prince (10 platinum albums, thirty Top 40 singles) is known for constantly reinventing his style. In a glorious chart by artist ...

Fifty years after the release of his debut album, Otis Redding remains one of the most soulful, evocative voices in popular music. His songs have been the soundtrack to true love and heartbreak, some of the greatest film scenes of all time, lazy days and steamy nights. This page will be a collection of people’s stories from all over the world, giving fans new and old a glimpse into the meaning that an Otis song adds to the human experience.

In the climactic scenes of the film Quadrophenia, based on The Who’s concept album, Jimmy (Phil Daniels) rides a prized Mod scooter along the cliffs at Beachy Head, East Sussex, before hurling it over the cliff on to the sea-lashed rocks below. It’s a symbolic end to Jimmy’s life as a Mod, as a follower believing in false idols, like his hero Ace Face (Sting) (whose scooter he stole), a local Mod leader, who turns out be nothing more than a bell-boy lackey. Jimmy’s fall is central to the film, and to Pete Townhend’s album. But Jimmy’s symbolic crash may have actually been inspired by the death of Mod teenager, Barry Prior in 1964.

“I would say every artist is, in effect, trying to figure how the human race can be saved from itself. So in those days when we sang for the union workers, and today when I go around and sing on a picket line, I’m not really being all that different. Artists who say ‘We’re only interested in art for art’s sake’ are fooling themselves, I think.”