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Richard Gehr

Richard Gehr

A regular contributor to SPIN, the VILLAGE VOICE, NEW YORK NEWSDAY and a host of other American publications, Gehr is a native of Oregon who relocated to Brooklyn via Los Angeles (where he worked for several years on the LOS ANGELES READER).

76 articles

List of articles in the library

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Scritti Politti: Cupid and Psyche 85 (Warner Brothers)

Review by Richard Gehr, Spin, September 1985

SCRITTI POLITTI (Italian for "political writings") emerged in the late 70s as a hyperanalytic postpunk trio, breaking onto the pop-aesthetic horizon with a series of ...

Various Artists: Best of Studio One, Vol. 2 — Full Up (Heartbeat)

Review by Richard Gehr, Spin, October 1985

THE FURTHER adventures in the multifaceted, knob-twirling career of seminal reggae producer Clement ("Sir Coxsone") Dodd. When we last left our hero, Heartbeat Records' two ...

The Red Hot Chili Peppers: Red Hot Chili Peppers: Freaky Styley (EMI America/Enigma)

Review by Richard Gehr, Glenn O'Brien, Spin, November 1985

WELCOME TO THE Day-Glo minstrel show, bro, brought to you by the baddest posse of white funk puppies west of the mighty Mississip. ...

Cream, Ginger Baker: The Ginger Baker Challenge

Interview by Richard Gehr, Spin, January 1986

WHAT THE HELL is drummer dinger Baker doing in New York? Hanging out with the Celluloid Records central committee, of course, and laying down tracks for ...

The Residents: Part Four of the Mole Trilogy (Ralph)

Review by Richard Gehr, Spin, January 1986

PART THREE of the Residents' Mole Trilogy doesn't exist, but we can't let that keep us from utter confusion. It all comes down to the ...

Eugene Chadbourne: The President He Is Insane and other albums

Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, April 1986

URBAN ANTHROPOLOGISTS are well aware of the phenomenon of mystico-hysteric telephone-pole manifestoes tacked up by paranoid complusive types who deem it necessary to disseminate their ...

The Residents: Residents Only

Profile and Interview by Richard Gehr, Spin, April 1986

Take a good hard look at America's preeminent underground avant-pop ensemble – you might like what you see. ...

Butthole Surfers: Irving Plaza, NY

Live Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, May 1986

SORRY, THRILL SEEKERS, unlike the Butthole Surfers’ recent Danceteria appearance, there were no Live Sex Acts Onstage this time around. At Irving Plaza April 26, ...

Camper Van Beethoven: Astral Geeks

Interview by Richard Gehr, Spin, June 1986

"WE TAKE way too many hallucinogens, we're totally paranoid, and we believe in giant conspiracies. If we get a flat tire, it's caused by the ...

Pato Banton, Smiley Culture: Motormouth Dub: Smiley Culture/Pato Banton

Profile by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 16 September 1986

Some warp-speed world we live in, eh? It’s lucky we’ve got fast-forward buttons on our VCRs, quick-check lines at the A&P, automatic banking, speed-racer drugs, ...

Camper Van Beethoven: Camper Van Beethoven (Rough Trade)

Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 6 January 1987

CAMPER VAN Beethoven's first LP, last year's Telephone Free Landslide Victory, contained ‘Take the Skinheads Bowling’, an absurdist manifesto and immediate college-radio hit whose popularity ...

fIREHOSE: Ragin’, Full-On (SST)

Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 17 February 1987

LIFETIMES AGO, in 1982, the Minutemen titled their debut album What Makes a Man Start Fires? The Political power trio proceeded to answer their musical ...

Grateful Dead: The Grateful Dead: Meadowlands, New Jersey

Live Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 21 April 1987

‘S FUNNY. Today the Grateful Dead can’t capture the attention of the so-called alternative audience, just as they couldn’t the so-called straight audience in the ...

Lee "Scratch" Perry: Time Boom or De Devil Dead (On-U)

Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 23 June 1987

History. It started as a stripping-down process concocted to provide Jamaican reggae with skanky instrumentals over which crooners might croon and toasters might toast. ...

Negativland: Escape From Noise

Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 15 December 1987

IF I RAN THE marketing department at SST Records, I’d do burritos with someone over at the University of Minnesota Press and make sure Negativland’s ...

Frank Zappa: Frank Generation

Profile by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 17 February 1988

If I may be so crass as to adjudge a rock icon by his fans, I'd say Frank Zappa might have a demographics problem. Admittedly, ...

Ofra Haza: Sacred Samples

Live Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 29 March 1988

Ofra Haza: S.O.B.’s, New York ...

Bongwater: Double Bummer

Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 7 June 1988

MARK KRAMER doesn't simply produce records, he saturates them. Even the quieter moments of such swell yet dissimilar albums as Half Japanese's Music To Strip ...

Joan Jett: Her Life Was Saved By Rock & Roll

Interview by Richard Gehr, Music & Sound Output, July 1988

IT FIGURES THAT JOAN JETT WOULD BE A BALTIMORE ORIOLES FAN. Like the Orioles, the three-chord rock’n’roll she’s purveyed for more than a decade has ...

Metallica

Interview by Richard Gehr, Music & Sound Output, September 1988

LARS ULRICH has recently risen from the sleep, dreamless or otherwise, of the very successful. His band, billed fourth (between Led Zep wannaboys Kingdom Come ...

Souled American: Flubber

Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 13 June 1989

BECAUSE DAD SOLD toys for a living (a mixed blessing, believe me), I was the first kid on our block to own a glob of ...

Van Dyke Parks: A Yen for Japan

Interview by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 3 October 1989

Studiously blasé vibes radiate from within the overlit television studio on West 25th Street. Van Dyke Parks, our downwardly mobile country’s greatest unstaged musical-theater composer, ...

The Residents: Taking Care of Business

Profile by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 23 January 1990

The Residents used to be such irritating misfits, what with their art school disguises and grating resentful satires of '60s pop music. Nerds and outsiders ...

Jack Bruce: Basscapades

Profile by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 13 February 1990

If you were born November 26, 1968, the day Cream gave its farewell concert at the Royal Albert Hall, let me stand you a legal ...

Bongwater: Too Much Sleep (Shimmy-Disc)

Review by Richard Gehr, Spin, July 1990

KRAMER AND ANN MAGNUSON of Bongwater — the Shimmy-Disc shaman and the unlikely TV star; the Carlos and Carla Castaneda of the bi-coastal blunderground — ...

3 Mustaphas 3: Soup of the Century (Rykodisc)

Review by Richard Gehr, Spin, January 1991

THE 3 MUSTAPHAS 3 are the Residents of non-Western popular music, right? After all, both groups (1) hide behind costumes, (2) make musical hash of ...

Elvis Costello: Mighty Like a Mouth

Interview by Richard Gehr, Creem, June 1991

What do we talk about when we talk about pop music? "Rock & roll is a ludicrous response to most things," admits Elvis Costello. ...

Frank Zappa: The Mother of Inversion

Profile and Interview by Richard Gehr, Fanfare, 30 June 1991

FRANK ZAPPA is a long-standing foe of warning about violent or sexually explicit lyrics – advocated by the Parents’ Music Resource Center and adopted by ...

Caetano Veloso: Town Hall, New York City

Live Review by Richard Gehr, Newsday, 8 August 1991

Brazil's most respected singer-songwriter is a velvet-voiced visionary with a surreal sense of humor. Richard Gehr at Town Hall, Saturday night. ...

Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia: An Interview with Jerry Garcia

Interview by Richard Gehr, Newsday, 9 September 1991

IT WAS THE first thing that happened to the Grateful Dead when they arrived in New York City on June 1, 1967, and Jerry Garcia ...

Grateful Dead: Nassau Coliseum, Long Island, NY

Live Review by Richard Gehr, Newsday, 12 March 1992

ICY WINDS RIPPED ACROSS Long Island Wednesday night as the Grateful Dead launched the first of three sold-out Uniondale evenings with the meteorologically inspired 'Cold ...

Shabba Ranks: Dancehall Invasion

Report by Richard Gehr, Newsday, 27 August 1992

CURRENTLY MAKING impressive inroads into the American market, dancehall reggae may be the most challenging--and, many would say, irritating--style of popular music since rap, which ...

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Party: Town Hall, NYC

Live Review by Richard Gehr, Newsday, 11 October 1992

SITTING CROSS-LEGGED on an Indian carpet, surrounded by his seven-man qawwali "party," rotund Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan may look like Jabba the Hut but he ...

Interview: Matt Groening

Interview by Richard Gehr, Spin, January 1993

MATT GROENING has breathed new life into prime-time animation and inspired a merchandising empire to boot. Richard Gehr talks to the show-biz guerrilla. ...

Sun Ra And His Intergalactic Harmonic Divergent Jazz Arkestra: S.O.B.'s, New York

Live Review by Richard Gehr, Spin, January 1993

WHEN SUN RA opened for Sonic Youth in Central Park last summer, the bill confirmed at least one unavoidable equation: No Sun Ra equals no ...

Frank Sinatra/Don Rickles: Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Uniondale, NY

Live Review by Richard Gehr, Spin, January 1994

"HE TOUCHES his dick more than Robin Williams does," mocked my wife as a tuxedoed Don Rickles lumbered around the square, center-court stage like a ...

Frank Zappa: Viva Zappa! 1940-1993

Obituary by Richard Gehr, Spin, March 1994

THE SUMMER between eighth and ninth grades — the same mystical season I smoked pot, read V, and almost had sex with someone else for ...

Ry Cooder, Ali Farka Toure: Ali Farka Touré with Ry Cooder: Talking Timbuktu (Hannibal)

Review by Richard Gehr, Spin, May 1994

DE BLUES is a harsh mistress. So what a pleasure when someone like Mali guitar giant Ali Farka Touré comes along to let us off ...

Future Sound of London: The Future Sound of London: Lifeforms (Astralwerks/Caroline)

Review by Richard Gehr, Spin, September 1994

GOD BLESS the Future Sound of London — Gary Cobain and Brian Dougans — for striving to infuse personality and humanity into the chip-driven technoscape. ...

Robert Earl Keen: Gringo Honeymoon

Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 31 October 1994

ONCE OR TWICE a year I can count on a new country album to sidle up and tear apart my cement-encrusted heart. More often than ...

Bill Frisell: America Lost and Found

Profile by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 4 December 1994

GUITARIST BILL Frisell is the cowlick on the towhead of American music. In his most signature mode, he favors a languorous, spacious sound that combines ...

Jerry Garcia, Grateful Dead: Jerry Garcia: The Fat Man Sings

Obituary by Richard Gehr, Spin, October 1995

Richard Gehr pays tribute to the mind-bending music and halcyon spirit of the late Jerry Garcia. ...

Robert Earl Keen: Gringo Honeymoon (Sugar Hill)

Review by Richard Gehr, Spin, November 1995

ADD COUNTRY singer Robert Earl Keen to the expanding pantheon of Texas songwriting gurus. On his fifth album, Keen excels at crisp and witty first-person ...

Butch Hancock, The Flatlanders, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, Terry Allen: Lubbock on Everything: The Best Little Neo-Country Town in Texas?

Retrospective and Interview by Richard Gehr, unpublished, 1996

In 1996, Richard Gehr went down to Texas to explore the history and mythology of Buddy Holly’s home town. This was his unpublished report for ...

Mickey Hart, Robert Hunter: Hart and Hunter: Opening the Mystery Box

Interview by Richard Gehr, Rolling Stone, 31 May 1996

So what's so mysterious about the Mystery Box?Mickey Hart: The musical mystery is, How do you marry tuned percussion and voice? And on a metaphorical ...

Los Lobos: Wild Gift

Profile and Interview by Richard Gehr, Spin, June 1996

Years down the road, Los Lobos defy all odds, making the most radically experimental music of their career. Richard Gehr hones in on their secret ...

DJ Spooky: Spooky After Dark: The DJ as Dead Dreamer

Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 6 June 1996

DJ SPOOKY'S Songs of a Dead Dreamer (Asphodel) magically distills the mysterioso live performances the artist (and occasional Voice contributor) otherwise known as Paul D. ...

Grateful Dead, Mickey Hart, Robert Hunter: Q&A: Mickey Hart & Robert Hunter

Interview by Richard Gehr, Rolling Stone, 5 September 1996

IT'S BEEN A hectic, emotional year for former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and the band's longtime lyricist Robert Hunter. After coming to grips with ...

Phish: Billy Breathes (Elektra)

Review by Richard Gehr, Rolling Stone, 31 October 1996

Phish's sixth album, A Live One (released last year) distilled a decade's worth of dedicated roadwork by a group that reinvented improvised rock for a ...

Silver Apples

Profile by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 23 January 1997

AN AKIMBO version of hippie-band staple 'In the Midnight Hour' was the only thing about the Silver Apples' recent appearance suggesting they were anything other ...

Fela Kuti: Afro Poppa: Fela Kuti, 1938-1997

Obituary by Richard Gehr, Spin, October 1997

IN THE annals of pop political activism, taking on TicketMaster or spoofing K Mart consumerism hardly compares to the cheeky dissidence of Nigerian superstar Fela ...

Os Mutantes: Meet the Mutants

Retrospective by Richard Gehr, Spin, February 1998

Brazil's pop bomb squad do the samba on Strawberry Fields ...

Tom Zé: Fabrication Defect (Luaka Bop/Warner Bros.)

Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, May 1998

TOM ZÉ'S peculiar contribution to the Tropicalistas' highly influential 1968 collaborative album Tropicalia: Ou Panis Et Circencis was the satiric antidevelopment anthem ‘Parque Industrial’, which ...

Ash Ra Tempel, Can: Krautrock Revisited: Life After Can and Ash Ra Tempel

Essay by Richard Gehr, Spin, 20 July 1998

EVEN BEFORE KRAFTWERK'S great mid-'70s cars, trains, and airwaves trilogy, Krautrock was largely about getting away – especially from Germany itself. The band Can in ...

Frank Zappa: Too Much or Not Enough?

Retrospective by Richard Gehr, unpublished, 11 April 1999

By the time of his death from prostate cancer on December 4, 1993, Frank Zappa's taste for life on the road had all but vanished. ...

Augustus Pablo 1953-99

Obituary by Richard Gehr, Spin, July 1999

JAMAICA'S A QUIRKY PLACE, to say the least, so it's oddly appropriate that its foremost instrumental soloist would turn out to be a low-key virtuoso ...

Souled American: Weird Old Country: The Disinternment of Souled American

Retrospective by Richard Gehr, Spin, July 1999

WITH DUE RESPECT to old Uncle Tupelo, it was the cultishly-revered country-and-Midwestern combo Souled American who laid the deep, dank groundwork for the No Depression ...

Captain Beefheart: Grow Fins

Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 1 July 1999

SINCE THE 1969 release of Trout Mask Replica, the artist dubbed Captain Beefheart has incarnated the gold standard by which "weirdness" in rock music has ...

Skip Spence : Alexander Spence: Oar; Various Artists: More Oar

Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 3 August 1999

IF EVERY Sgt. Pepper's begets its Satanic Majesties Request, and every Woodstock its Woodstock '99, Alexander "Skip" Spence's post-Bellevue Oar, first released in 1969, resembles ...

Widespread Panic: Til the Medicine Takes (Capricorn)

Review by Richard Gehr, Spin, September 1999

DOES ANY musical style beg more loudly for a swift kick in the boot-cut Levis than Southern-fried boogie? Or is the tradition of such bands ...

Gomez: Irving Plaza, NYC

Live Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 28 September 1999

WHEN GOMEZ SINGS the line from 'Here Comes the Breeze' that goes, "There's no shame in going out of style," you have to admire the ...

Tom Verlaine: The Sound of Silents: Tom Verlaine

Live Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 20 October 1999

IF THE MODEST obligation of a silent-film accompanist is to serve the movie, Tom Verlaine succeeded admirably during his Arts at St. Ann's appearance on ...

Gomez: Liquid Skin (Virgin)

Review by Richard Gehr, Spin, November 1999

RAISED ON the self-consciously savvy white American soul of acts such as the Black Crowes, Beck, and Slayer, these five young Mojo cover boys ("The ...

The Great Rave/Jam Band Crossover Syndrome

Report and Interview by Richard Gehr, Spin, August 2000

THE DISCO BISCUITS are onstage at Philadelphia's Trocadero surrounded by the entire contents of their living room: the bong-water stained sofa, a decrepit TV (with ...

The Band: Band on the Rerun: Rowdy, haunting and resonant, The Band is the voice of a vanished America

Retrospective by Richard Gehr, My Generation, 3 February 2001

A GORGEOUS MELANCHOLY lies at the core of the music created by The Band, four Canadian rockers and an Arkansas drummer who, some argue, brought ...

Funkadelic: Hardcore Jollies/One Nation Under A Groove/Uncle Jam Wants You/The Electric Spanking Of War Babies

Review by Richard Gehr, Blender, August 2002

George Clinton's freaky crew in its late '70s prime. ...

The Swimming Pool Q's: Royal Academy of Reality

Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 12 August 2003

"HER LIGHT HAS been delayed" are the first words sung by Jeff Calder on a record a decade or more in the making, by a band that's ...

The High Llamas: City and Country: High Llamas' Beet, Maize & Corn

Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 9 December 2003

IS ANY SONGWRITER more finely attuned to the shimmering membrane separating city and country than Sean O'Hagan?  ...

Joanna Newsom: The Milk-Eyed Mender (Drag City)

Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 4 May 2004

THE INCREDIBLE String Band's cryptic whimsy and Vashti Bunyan's beautiful balladry have quietly resurfaced in a bushel of great new bands, and especially so, it seems, ...

Derek Bailey: Ben Watson: Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation

Book Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 17 August 2004

FREE IMPROVISATION is the automatic writing, the abstract expressionism, or as British critic Ben Watson most aptly describes it, the "stand-up comedy" of musical performance.  ...

Camper Van Beethoven: New Roman Times

Review by Richard Gehr, Tracks, December 2004

FOR THEIR FIRST album since 1989's elegiac Key Lime Pie, David Lowery and his original posse of SoCal stoners reunite for a fascinating life-during-wartime alt-rock ...

Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris: Elvis Costello with Emmylou Harris and the Imposters: Central Park SummerStage

Live Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 19 July 2005

IT SEEMS SLIGHTLY ridiculous now, but Elvis Costello's 1981 Almost Blue came with a sticker warning: "This album contains country & Western music & may produce radical reaction ...

Neneh Cherry Talks Her Weird Punk-Pop-Jazz Trajectory, and the New Blank Project

Interview by Richard Gehr, Spin, 24 February 2014

A JAZZ EXPERIMENTALIST in her teens and a pop star in her twenties, Neneh Cherry has enjoyed a career unlike any other singer of her ...

The Pop Group: The Oral History of the Pop Group: The Noisy Brits Who Were Too Punk for the Punks

Interview by Richard Gehr, Rolling Stone, 7 November 2014

While London was calling, these Bristol teenagers responded with dub, avant-jazz and noise — and inspired everyone from Nick Cave to Nine Inch Nails. ...

Gregg Allman, Southern Rock Pioneer, Dead at 69

Obituary by Richard Gehr, Rolling Stone, 27 May 2017

Allman Brothers Band leader "passed away peacefully at his home in Savannah, Georgia". ...

Frank Zappa: Hot Rats at 50

Retrospective by Richard Gehr, Los Angeles Times, 5 March 2020

How Frank Zappa busted up his band, moved to L.A. and helped invent jazz-rock. ...

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