Andrew Hamlin

1 week 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.

2 weeks 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.

4 weeks 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.

4 weeks 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.

1 month ago | sgn.org | Andrew Hamlin

From Jeff Lorber to Richard Marx, General Hospital to Desperate Housewives, saxophonist Dave Koz has spent the last 38 years blowing all over the place in the ever-turbulent music biz. His latest album, Just Us, a series of duets with pianist Bob James, comes out March 7 on his own Just Koz Entertainment label. The duo brings an evening of music and stories to Jazz Alley on April 1. He recently took questions from the SGN. Andrew Hamlin: What are your favorite stories from playing Seattle before?