Ira Robbins co-founded Trouser Press magazine in 1974. (Think of it as a pre-Internet music blog). He was later pop music editor at Newsday and has written for countless other publications great and small. He played in the bands Knickers and Utensil. His first novel is Kick It Till It Breaks. He is (regrettably) no relation to Ira Kaplan.
Emboldened by mounting success and buoyed by a stabilized six-piece lineu… more »
While setting out to repeat their collaborative approach on Parallel Line… more »
The keys to Blondie's future success could be discerned on their 1976… more »
It's always unsettling for a band that has strong songwriters to find… more »
For a group with a lot at stake, career-wise, Blondie showed a lot of gut… more »
Like other new wave groups active in the early days of MTV (Simple Minds,… more »
Like other new wave groups active in the early days of MTV (Simple Minds,… more »
In the fall of 1975, when Blondie could often be found playing the back r… more »
Think rock festivals of the ’60s had star power? Pshaw! In December… more »
"There's only two songs in me and I just wrote the third/ Don't k… more »
If the worst that can be said of nostalgic music is that it makes you mis… more »
From a New Yorker's vantage point (and, no, this is not baseball riva… more »
Whether it was a reflection of actual dissipation or a theatrical affecta… more »
If words actually had meaning any more, the “pop” half of pow… more »
If words actually had meaning any more, the "pop" half of power pop would… more »
Other than its uncharacteristic hard-rock guitar sound, The Curse of Blon… more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-… more »
Fed by two different songwriting styles, Ramones albums yin and yanged be… more »
Johnny, who always clung to a strict vision of what the Ramones should re… more »
Like other bands frustrated by their lack of commercial success, the Ramo… more »
Beyond the stylistic courage to pierce punk’s rockist purity with s… more »
Among the many style-defining virtues (need a list? start with breakneck … more »
No sophomore slump for these guys: the Ramones' second release serves… more »
Maybe it wasn't the safest idea to put the Ramones in a studio with P… more »
As they age, extreme metal merchants often inject various non-metallic styles into their songs in order to hasten their musical growth. Sometimes, as with Alcest and Jesu, they develop to the point where their original… more »
