In the darkest of musical Januarys comes word that Beatle Bob has stopped dancing.
Bob Matonis is the St. Louis-based fan that looks like an Ed Sullivan-era Beatle replete in black suits and black bangs.
Known as “Beatle Bob,” he has spent decades dancing a mosh-up of the Twist and the Frug in the front rows of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, South by Southwest in Austin, Tx. FitzGerald’s in Berwyn and hundreds of other music clubs.
Beatle Bob has claimed to have seen 9,439 days of concerts in a row.
That number was in an e-mail he sent out Sunday night announcing that his streak was coming to an end on Jan. 23, 2023. It [...]
Ironing Sam’s keyboard at NMAAM. I was so happy to see this.
NASHVILLE, TN.–For an edifice fixed in time, a museum can move in many ways. There are moments of discovery and minutes of connection. A museum can be a unifier.
Over Christmas, my brother and I visited the two-year-old National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM) in downtown Nashville. The magnificent 56,000-square-foot museum is a block away from the historic Ryman Auditorium. There are more than 1,500 artifacts, objects, and photos and many of them have Chicago connections: Chess Records, Mahalia Jackson, Sam Cooke, The [...]
