Ira Kantor’s Vinyl Confessions: Driven To Sniff ‘n’ the Tears

Photos Courtesy of Paul Roberts Their lone U.S. hit begins simply enough until nine seconds in — a few acoustic guitar strums and then POW, the musical gas is punched...

Ira Kantor’s Vinyl Confessions: The Lovable Sweetness of Lime

Photo Courtesy of Denyse Le Page Disco supposedly bit the dust on July 12, 1979. The venue was Comiskey Park in Chicago where, during a White Sox-Tigers battle royale, a dumpster full...

Ira Kantor’s Vinyl Confessions: Little Big Man On The Silver Mountain ~ The Recorded...

Photo Courtesy of Mickey Lee Soule Before Ronnie James Dio became the undisputed godfather of heavy metal — replete with devil-horn gnarled hands — he was Ronald Padavona, frontman for...

Ira Kantor’s Vinyl Confessions: Exile On Easy Street

Photo Courtesy of Exile In 1978, the Gibb brothers and younger sibling Andy engaged in a six-month-long ping-pong-like domination over the Billboard Hot 100, volleying one iconic hit to fans...

Ira Kantor’s Vinyl Confessions: Treat It As A Good Thing – Jon Anderson...

Photo Courtesy of Stan Johnson Before Amazon entered my life, I was forced to hunt for hard-to-come-by CDs the old-fashioned way — in America’s many, many Goodwill stores. In one such...

Ira Kantor’s Vinyl Confessions: “AHORA!” (Carmen’s Celestial Masterwork)

Photo Courtesy of David Randall-Goddard Carmen Fandangos In Space A few years back, Rolling Stone published its list of the Top 50 prog rock albums of all-time, spanning multiple regions, degrees of...

Ira Kantor’s Vinyl Confessions: Billy Cobham’s Vital Transformation ~ Billy Cobham’s ‘Spectrum’

Photo Courtesy of Billy Cobham Billy Cobham Spectrum Billy Cobham became a legend well before releasing his debut solo album. Prior to 1973, the Panamanian drummer by way of New York cut...

Ira Kantor’s Vinyl Confessions: The Kings Are (Still!) Here

Photo Courtesy of Deborah Samuel The Kings The Kings Are Here They had the attitudes of punks and the chops to be a Canadian Beatles. The story of how I discovered The Kings...

Ira Kantor’s Vinyl Confessions: The Sweet Green Icing Of Success ~ In Defense Of...

Photo by Henry Diltz "You don’t mean to suggest that someone would criticize ('MacArthur Park')? I mean, my God! (laughter)" – Jimmy Webb, March 2018 Based on its compositional structure alone, “MacArthur Park” should...

Ira Kantor’s Vinyl Confessions: Snake Eyes, Seventh Heaven ~ The Alan Parsons Project ‘The...

Photo Courtesy of Lenny Zakatek The Alan Parsons Project The Turn Of A Friendly Card In 1980, the Alan Parsons Project opted to make gambling the core concept of its fifth album....