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: ***
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: ***
List of articles in the library
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Essay by RJ Smith, L.A. Weekly, 4 October 1990
RJ Smith on Living Colour and pop's buried history ...
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, The Times, 20 May 1991
Barney Hoskyns on the continuing power struggle between black and white influences in popular music ...
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 ...
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 ...
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, ...
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 ...
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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