Gadfly
Gadfly was a magazine published in Charlottesville, Virginia, focusing on popular culture, including music, and film. It was created in February 1997 and launched as a full-size print publication in January 1998. After the publication of the last print issue, in March/April 2001, Gadfly Online was started, but this was only published for a little over a year.
51 articles
List of articles in the library
The Sex Pistols: Sod Awf! The Sex Pistols And Other Pleasantries Of Punk
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, February 1998
A Short History of the NOW! ROCK EXISTS in the humming; now, an all-enveloping bubble of sound, energy and ecstasy. Like being at the flashpoint ...
Profile by David Dalton, Gadfly, July 1998
IF THIS WERE the world it ought to be — that fantasy rockabilly kingdom dream up at Sun Records in the mid-fifties of flash, trash ...
Paul McCartney: Linda McCartney: How Rock 'n' Roll Saved Our Lives
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, August 1998
I FIRST MET Linda McCartney at the Scene on West 46th Street. A hip little grotto in a cellar, it was run by the cool ...
Big Brother & The Holding Company, Janis Joplin: A Shot From The Heart: Janis and Cheap Thrills
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, September 1998
IT'S 30 YEARS ago today since Cheap Thrills was released, but as soon as the needle touches the surface of the record (I’m sentimental about ...
David Bowie, Gary Glitter, Roxy Music, Sweet, T. Rex: Divine Decadence: Memories Of Glam
Retrospective by Jon Savage, Gadfly, October 1998
GLAM — or as it was originally called in the UK, Glitter Rock — flourished from early summer 1972 to summer 1974: shorter than Hippie, ...
John Cale, Velvet Underground: John Cale: What's Welsh for Zen?
Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, January 1999
THE VELVET Underground in their classic phase (1966-1968) lasted barely two years and released only two studio albums, but their influence has been immense. ...
The Beatles, The Velvet Underground: Top Forty Hits of the 20th Century, #1 and #2
Essay by Paul Williams, Gadfly, January 1999
IN THE half of this century that I've lived in, it's quite common to encounter "best-of-the-year" lists of movies or records in newspapers and magazines, ...
Palace Music, Will Oldham: Will Oldham aka Bonnie Prince Billy
Profile and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, January 1999
LO-FI POET OF THE MIND'S OWN TIDE ...
The Kinks : Remembrance Of Kinks Past
Retrospective and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, March 1999
TAKE A LOOK at that face, the face of Ray Davies, it's the classic Dickensian mug, the face of a silent movie comedian, a vaudevillian, ...
D.A. Pennebaker: I Film While Leaping From My Chair
Retrospective and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, April 1999
"Almost immediately reality gave in on more than one point. The truth is, it longed to give in." – Jorge Luis Borges ...
The Rolling Stones: Redlands: The Drug Bust of The Rolling Stones
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, May 1999
Friday 11th February 1967. Keith Richard has just invited you down to Redlands, his fourteenth-century manor house in Sussex, for the weekend. Mick and Marianne ...
The Doors, John Lennon, Elvis Presley: What Killed Albert Goldman? A literary X-file
Retrospective by Victor Bockris, Gadfly, July 1999
In the 1980s, Albert Goldman became the most famous and despised biographer in the world because of his biographies of Elvis Presley (Elvis, McGraw Hill, ...
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, August 1999
Woodstock. August 15, 16, 17, 1969. Three days of peace, love and music. For the past thirty years, it has been touted as a new ...
The Rolling Stones: Altamont: An Eyewitness Account
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, November 1999
The Rosy Apocalypse ALTAMONT, 6th December, 1969. The name itself is fraught with menace – its flinty suggestive syllables (altar-mountain-tumult) reinforcing biblical overtones. ("The ...
The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson: Brian Wilson: "Help Me, Rhonda," Indeed!
Essay by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2000
HEY, ALL you surfin’ dudes and hardbody wahinis, check out this thing on TNT. It’s a tribute to the surf god, Brian Wilson! ...
Retrospective by Victor Bockris, Gadfly, January 2000
BEFORE THE New Journalism of Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese, before the absurd cinema of Stanley Kubrick, before the Brave Gonzo World of Hunter S. ...
Essay by Victor Bockris, Gadfly, May 2000
Somebody once asked who Andy Warhol reminded me of. My answer, Muhammad Ali, tickled the artist so much that he used the statement in a ...
Lester Bangs: Rock 'n' Roll was the Big Bang
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, July 2000
FOR A LONG time, its shockwaves obliterated thought altogether. That was the great thing about it: it was anti-matter, it vaporized everything that wasn’t immediate, ...
Bob Dylan: Something Was Happening, But I Didn’t Know What It Was
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, September 2000
IN THE SPRING of 1970, I saw Les Blank’s lush, lyrical intimate documentaries about the blues singers Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb. They’re amazing films ...
The Last Poets: Progenitors of Rap
Retrospective and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, September 2000
Perhaps it was the Vietnam War dragging on, nightly television footage of bombed villages, body bags and helicopters dropping flaming glue on Vietnamese farmers or ...
Special Feature by David Dalton, Gadfly, 12 October 2000
INTERIOR DAY: A SMALL CUBICLE AT THE OBSOLETE ROCK 'N' ROLL WRITERS' RESIDENCY ...
Down From the Mountain: Invasion of the Autoharp Damsels and Flat-Pickin' Boys
Report and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2001
OPENING SHOT: SOMEWHERE IN the mid-West. Through windscreen we see two-lane black top. Flat, farmland stretches out to the horizon. We pull back to see ...
Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2001
AFTER A six-year break the outrageous Britcom Absolutely Fabulous is back with a new six-part series. The "Donkey" episode airing on the Comedy Channel on ...
Paul McCartney, Wings: On the Wings of a Beatle
Retrospective by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2001
"DADDY, tell us how it all began, how the walls of Pepperland crumbled, how the Blue Meanies with their lawyers and chartered accounts came and ...
Jack Nitzsche, The Rolling Stones: Tuning the Key of the Universe: Jack Nitzsche Remembered
Profile and Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2001
Jack Nitzsche, who died last August at the age of 63, was a seminal but shadowy figure in rock ’n’ roll since the early '60s. ...
Visions of the Seventies: The Rise And Fall of a Cultural Challenge
Retrospective by Victor Bockris, Gadfly, January 2001
The 1970s were America's low tide. Not since the Depression had the country been so wracked with woe. Never—not even during the Depression—had America's pride ...
Eminem: It's Rock 'N' Roll, Stupid!
Comment by David Dalton, Gadfly, 22 February 2001
I KNOW NOW I really have turned into my parents. Did I really spend three hours watching this dopey, homogenized, pre-packaged pap? Dear Lord, I ...
Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield: Mike Bloomfield: Bloomfield's Doomed Field
Memoir by Al Kooper, Gadfly, March 2001
FOR SOME strange reason, we referred to each other by our "proper" names, Michael and Alan. To everyone else, it was Mike Bloomfield and Al ...
Comment by David Dalton, Gadfly, 22 March 2001
NOW WHAT did I do with my invitation? Not that I had any intention of attending (on moral grounds, mind you). The $25,000 a table ...
Bob Dylan: Howard Sounes: Down the Highway – The Life of Bob Dylan
Book Review by Peter Stone Brown, Gadfly, April 2001
BOB DYLAN HAS been the subject of innumerable books. In this (the fifth) full-scale biography, British reporter Howard Sounes tracked down people previously unknown and ...
The Ramones: Joey Ramone, 1951-2001
Obituary by David Dalton, Gadfly, 19 April 2001
LAST SUNDAY Joey Ramone, lead singer of the Ramones, died of lymphoma, and so passed one of the originators of punk, the longest running fuck-you ...
The Beatles, Paul McCartney: Once Upon A Beatle
Comment by David Dalton, Gadfly, 14 May 2001
"DADDY, TELL US how it all began, how the walls of Pepperland crumbled, how the Blue Meanies with their lawyers and chartered accounts came and ...
Book Review by Peter Stone Brown, Gadfly, 28 May 2001
A SIMPLE TWIST of Fate might have been a more appropriate title for this book, which is essentially a biography of Richard Fariña in disguise. ...
The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson: Brian Wilson: 'Help Me, Rhonda' indeed!
Comment by David Dalton, Gadfly, 9 July 2001
HEY, ALL YOU surfin' dudes and hardbody wahinis, check out this thing on TNT. It's a tribute to the surf god, Brian Wilson! An American ...
Howard Tate: The Return Of A Soul Music Master
Interview by Peter Stone Brown, Gadfly, 22 October 2001
"Last I heard about him he was in New York, and Jerry Ragovoy used to produce him. He made all these demos with the guy ...
Live Review by Peter Stone Brown, Gadfly, December 2001
"Things should start to get interesting right about now." – Bob Dylan, 'Mississippi' ...
The Rolling Stones: Stephen Davis' Old Gods Almost Dead
Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, December 2001
David Dalton Talks to Stephen Davis, Author of the First Full-Dress Biography of the Rolling Stones in Twenty Years ...
Emmett Miller: Nick Tosches: Where Dead Voices Gather
Book Review by David Dalton, Gadfly, 10 December 2001
MINSTRELSY (1843-1928): the mere mention of the word is politically incorrect. You know, white performers blackening their faces with burnt cork and performing skits and ...
The Beatles: The Day the Angels Spent Christmas with the Beatles
Memoir by David Dalton, Gadfly, 12 December 2001
WELL, NO, IT'S NOT that kind of story, exactly, although given the fairytale element in the legend of the Fab Four you might, circa 1964, ...
John Lee Hooker: An Appreciation
Memoir by Peter Stone Brown, Gadfly, Summer 2001
JOHN LEE HOOKER'S death is tragic not so much for the loss of one of the greatest blues artists, but because there are so few ...
Review by Peter Stone Brown, Gadfly, Fall 2001
"Some day everything's gonna be different /When I paint my masterpiece" – Bob Dylan, 1971 ...
Review by Peter Stone Brown, Gadfly, 2002
EARLY IN 1963, two blues collectors, Tom Hoskins and Richard Spottswood, pulled into a town in Mississippi that wasn't on the map, called Avalon. ...
Nico and The Marble Index: A Conversation with Danny Fields
Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2002
WHEN THE MARBLE Index appeared in 1969 it seemed unplaceable, flying out of some timeless place, as if we were hearing from a possessed medieval ...
Richard Hell: What Fresh Hell Is This?
Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 2002
RICHARD HELL was the primal Punk, the ur-Punk: the spiky-haired one. The torn t-shirts, the safety pins, the era-defining ‘Blank Generation’–much of the ...
Dave Van Ronk: The Life (and Death) of Dave Van Ronk
Retrospective by Peter Stone Brown, Gadfly, 11 February 2002
THE HEADLINE February 10 announcing Dave Van Ronk's death in Reuters said, "Folk Pioneer", but I always thought of him as more than that. First ...
George Harrison: My Walk-On in the Life of George
Memoir by David Dalton, Gadfly, 12 March 2002
"FIRST OF ALL," my friend Richard said, "he was a Beatle, how could he die?" They were immortal, weren't they? Gods, even if flawed. A ...
Marianne Faithfull: The Curse of the Multiplying Mariannes
Interview by David Dalton, Gadfly, 18 March 2002
PART 1: THE SCATTERED SELVES Gadfly: I wanted to start by asking you to describe the various Mariannes who have manifested themselves over the years. ...
Review by Peter Stone Brown, Gadfly, April 2002
NOW WAY BACK in 1966, Bob Dylan at the suggestion of his producer decided to record in Nashville. The result of course was Blonde On ...
The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson: Epiphany At Zuma Beach Or Brian Wilson Hallucinates Me
Memoir by David Dalton, Gadfly, May 2002
AFTER PET SOUNDS Brian Wilson became the mad genius of the Beach Boys, a prodigy who had miraculously emerged out of the surf and car ...
Ozzy Osbourne: "Martha Stewart Can Lick My Scrotum!" Life chez the Osbournes
Review by David Dalton, Gadfly, 17 May 2002
A COUPLE OF years ago, my wife Coco and I did a few shows in which we played Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen if had ...
Retrospective by Peter Stone Brown, Gadfly, Spring 2002
THIRTY YEARS BEFORE T-Bone Burnett gathered a bunch of excellent musicians in a Nashville studio to re-create early country music for the O Brother soundtrack, ...
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