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
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 ...
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? Its lucky weve 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 cant capture the attention of the so-called alternative audience, just as they couldnt 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, Id do burritos with someone over at the University of Minnesota Press and make sure Negativlands ...
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, ...
Live Review by Richard Gehr, The Village Voice, 29 March 1988
Ofra Haza: S.O.B.s, New York ...
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 rocknroll shes purveyed for more than a decade has ...
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 ...
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 countrys 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 ...
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 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 ...
Retrospective and Interview by Richard Gehr, unpublished, 1996
In 1996, Richard Gehr went down to Texas to explore the history and mythology of Buddy Hollys 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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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". ...
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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