Andrew Hamlin

2 weeks ago | sandiegoreader.com | Andrew Hamlin

Chula Vista band will play Soda Bar on May 26 Sledges’ new single “Fading” fades in with undulating soft tones that suggest some wavering seascape — the sort of thing the Cure did so well in their salad days. Then the menacing bass from Alex Angulo moves in, paced by Mason Haidar’s bass drum. The drums drop out, Julian Romero lets loose a few classic-Cure guitar plucks, and singer/guitarist Philly Gomez backs off a crucial scosche from his survey of alienation and frustration.

1 month ago | sandiegoreader.com | Robert Houghton |Richard Meltzer |Andrew Hamlin |Roger Anderson

Roger Anderson was not the only Reader writer to write about El Cajon classmate Lester Bangs. Bruce Springsteen and Bangs, 1975. Roger Anderson, who wrote Wednesday's story on Lester Bangs at Altamont and Friday's on Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona,  grew up in El Cajon, was part of early San Diego rock scene, wrote for alternative weeklies, and served as art director for the Washington Post. He died in January, 2003 in Baltimore, Maryland at the age of 53.

1 month ago | sandiegoreader.com | Andrew Hamlin

A fire so devastating, the firefighters wouldn’t move in to put it out. Sounds outrageous. Sounds horrifying. But that’s the move an alcoholic fire chief made  — or rather, didn’t make — at the Ashtabula River in Ohio, four days after Christmas in 1876, when a bridge collapsed just as an express train passed over it. Among the 92 dead (according to the official count) were the famous writer of hymns Philip P. Bliss and his wife Lucy.

1 month ago | sgn.org | Andrew Hamlin

Actress, singer, and cabaret performer Holly Woodlawn (1946—2016) survives in the minds of the public through the strength of two Andy Warhol movies from the '70s: Trash and Women in Revolt, plus enshrinement in Lou Reed's 1972 song "Walk on the Wild Side." At turns garish, lurid, and desperate, she strode the line between male and female, both on film and in real life.

1 month ago | sgn.org | Andrew Hamlin

Queen's 1975 studio album A Night at the Opera — which instantly became a classic and includes its highest-selling song, "Bohemian Rhapsody" — was nowhere to be found while perusing several Seattle record stores. But longtime Capitol Hill scribe Gillian G. Gaar remembers what the city's been missing. Her book Queen & A Night at the Opera: 50 Years, published by Quarto Motorbooks, drops on April 1.