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Living Colour

Living Colour

30 articles

Audio interviews

Living Colour's Vernon Reid (1988)

Interview by Mark Sinker, Rock's Backpages audio, April 1988

Vernon Reid talks about Living Colour signing to Epic Records; about his other projects and producing other acts; the state of Black music in America; the life and death of disco; the importance of Prince; his early days with Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society and Defunkt; the Black Rock Coalition; negative energy, drugs and racism; and the clichéd perceptions of African-Americans.

File format: mp3; file size: 78.9mb, interview length: 1h 22' 12" sound quality: ***

Living Colour (1988)

Interview by Mat Snow, Rock's Backpages audio, Fall 1988

The Black Rock pioneers debate race, the reclamation of rock by black musicians, and both the tensions and the possibilities contained by the cultural melting pot that is New York's Five Boroughs.

File format: mp3; file size: 59.2meg, interview length: 1h 01' 40" sound quality: ***

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Blindfold Test: Vernon Reid

Interview by Gene Santoro, Downbeat, December 1987

VERNON REID first hit the scene in Ronald Shannon Jackson's swaggering harmolodic adventure, the Decoding Society, where his role rapidly expanded as he evolved different ...

Black Rock Coalition: Living Colour’s Vernon Reid

Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 23 April 1988

2005 NOTE: This piece is a mess, though the underlying concept was good, and besides, the whole paper was a mess at this stage. I ...

Scorpions: Savage Amusement (Mercury); Living Colour: Vivid (Epic)

Review by J.D. Considine, Musician, July 1988

ADMIT IT — most of you would no sooner listen to metal than volunteer for root canal work. Metal is nasty, noisy, brutish, the kind ...

Living Colour, Cindy Lee Berryhill: The Marquee, London

Live Review by Ian Gittins, Melody Maker, 16 July 1988

LUST FOR LIFE ...

Living Colour: Astoria, London

Live Review by Steven Wells, New Musical Express, 17 September 1988

"IF YOU'RE black, it's OK to be two things, a crooner in a fairisle sweater or a bad ass B-Boy... look at the history of rock music, ...

Living Colour: Nailing Their Colours To The Mast

Interview by Mat Snow, Sounds, 24 September 1988

Living Colour's world vision may be in glorious technicolour, but they're the first to admit that a black rage sweeps through their music. Mat Snow ...

Living Colour: Colour Shifts

Interview by Paul Lester, Melody Maker, 25 March 1989

LIVING COLOUR'S LAST ALBUM, VIVID, IS STILL RIDING HIGH IN THE US CHARTS. THE BLACK ROCK COALITION STARS HAVE JUST SUPPORTED ANTHRAX ON THEIR RECENT ...

Anthrax, Living Colour: Hammersmith Odeon, London

Live Review by Push, Melody Maker, 1 April 1989

FAVOURITE COLOURS ...

Living Colour Turns to Gold

Profile and Interview by Michael Goldberg, Rolling Stone, 6 April 1989

A trailblazing black rock band scores ...

The Rolling Stones, Guns N' Roses, Living Colour: Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles CA

Live Review by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 21 October 1989

Guns N' Roses Shows Some Mettle ...

Talking Loud & Saying Nothing: The Electricity of Afrocentricity

Report and Interview by Chris Bourke, Rip It Up (New Zealand), December 1989

SUMMER IN THE city, New York City, and the place smells. Hot times, an expected high of 90 today, and more than the back of ...

Black Rock

Essay by David Toop, The Face, July 1990

White Rock we know about, but why should the idea of Black Rock be so difficult to comprehend? When Prince says his current tour is rock'n'roll based, he ...

Living Colour: Rocking the Boat

Interview by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 23 August 1990

Establishment America says rock is a white man's prerogative. Adam Sweeting on why Living Colour think otherwise ...

Living Colour: The Marquee, London

Live Review by Andrew Mueller, Melody Maker, 8 September 1990

ACTUALLY, Living Colour are quite frequently exhilarating. I mean, two days previously they'd cheered up an otherwise dismal early Reading Sunday. But that was just ...

Living Colour: Time's Up

Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Q, October 1990

LIVING COLOUR'S CHOICE of guest stars for their debut album Vivid was a significant one: Mick Jagger (who had produced their original demos and virtually ...

Black Rock & Roll

Essay by RJ Smith, L.A. Weekly, 4 October 1990

RJ Smith on Living Colour and pop's buried history ...

Ebony, Ivory and the Blues

Comment by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 20 May 1991

Barney Hoskyns on the continuing power struggle between black and white influences in popular music ...

Living Colour: Paint It Black

Interview by Paul Elliott, Vox, July 1991

So Elvis is the King of rock'n'roll, huh? Well he don't mean shit to Living Colour as they rap with Paul Elliot about the roots ...

Living Colour: Stain (Epic)

Review by Charles Shaar Murray, Guitar World, March 1993

WHAT’S YOUR favourite colour? Between the death of Jimi Hendrix in 1970 and the arrival of Living Colour’s 1988 debut album Vivid, the hard rock ...

Living Colour: Stain

Review by Max Bell, Vox, April 1993

VERNON REID'S POSITION at the forefront of the Black Rock Coalition gave Living Colour's first two albums, Vivid and Time's Up, a biting, satirical edge, ...

Living Colour: Stain (Epic)

Review by Deborah Frost, Musician, April 1993

BASS LOVERS of the world, this one's for you. Every track on Stain, Living Colour's third record, is a journey to the deepest ends of ...

Living Colour: 93 Minutes With Corey Glover and Vernon Reid

Report and Interview by Michael A. Gonzales, New York, 4 October 2009

Twenty-one years after 'Cult of Personality', Living Colour has a new album, a few regrets, and no intention of ever wearing neon spandex again. ...

Don't Call Living Colour a "Cult" Band, Please

Report and Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 24 July 2013

LIVING COLOUR vocalist Corey Glover knows it. He knows that, despite putting out five studio albums of criminally underrated rock, mention their name and the ...

Living Colour: An Interview with Doug Wimbish

Interview by Steve Mascord, Hot Metal, 4 January 2014

"BACK when I was a kid, in the stone age, this used to be an old furniture store," Corey Glover tells the hipsters paradise that ...

Afropunk Before Afropunk

Retrospective by Michael A. Gonzales, Ebony, 29 August 2014

LAST WEEK, for the first time in years, I missed the Afropunk festival. The musical movement began as an extension of a 2003 documentary of ...

Fear of Music: A Tribute to Black Rock Coalition

Retrospective and Interview by Michael A. Gonzales, Red Bull Academy Magazine, 7 October 2015

Michael Gonzales pens a love letter to the pioneering organization that helped propel Living Colour and others to stardom. ...

Living Colour's Fierce New Record Throws Shade on Lesser Bands

Profile and Interview by Bob Ruggiero, Houston Press, 26 July 2017

WHILE EARLY reports have pegged Living Colour's upcoming sixth studio release, Shade, as "a blues-based record", let's be clear about something. It is not an ...

Pride: Living Colour's Time's Up

Book Excerpt by Kimberly Mack, Bloomsbury Books, May 2023

This is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of Kimberly's 33 1/3 study of Living Colour's second album. ...

see also Punk-Funk All Stars

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