[Most weeks, I share a little background on the Bible lessons around which worship will be built the following Sunday at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, where I'm the pastor. Because we use the lessons appointed by the Revised Common Lectionary, I hope that more than just Saint Matthew...

There are two reasons that I'm glad I kept putting off my treatise on the very unfortunate Bob Dylan vs. will.i.am smackdown in honor of Pepsi: First, MTV News' James Montgomery pretty much summed up my thoughts on the overall "the present is kinda crappy, let's just OD on sugar" feel of the ad; and...

Remember how back in November former Observer 'Edgy Enthusiast' columnist Ron Rosenbaum used his Slate 'Spectator' column to call out Buzzmachine's Jeff Jarvis as "the Sarah Palin of Gurus"? At the time, Mr. Jarvis—a former magazine editor-turned-digital evangelist—responded by calling...

Billy Joel will be dissed, forever, by various critics. Now we're told the singer is a whiny misogynist — and 'The Worst Pop Singer Ever' — by Ron Rosenbaum in Slate. Joel is the the third rail of American pop culture. Though Rosenbaum doesn't seem aware of it, his isn't even Slate's fir...

This isn't exactly a revelation, but Ron Rosenbaum inexplicably fails to include the song that is arguably BJ's five-minute shite-load, "We Didn't Start the Fire." When I teach historiography and methods every other year, I typically devote about ten minutes on the first day to that particular crime...

It probably shouldn't be too surprising that Billy Joel took some time out of a recent show to pay tribute to AC/DC—after all, the two artists have been sharing playlist space on the Long Island rock-radio bastion WBAB for some time—but, well, I was shocked by the headline "Billy Joel co...

Billy Joel, joined by one of his roadies covered AC/DC’s Highway To Hell during a Florida concert last Friday. Billy Joel played the rhythm guitar parts while his roadie sang. Billy Joel is one of those musicians that can just seem to do no wrong. The video footage is kind of rough, but you ge...

Sayre Berman Billy JoelFriday, January 2, 2009
Hard Rock Live, Hollywood Being a piano man in a rock 'n' roll world can be a precarious proposition. Unless you have the cool of, say Jerry Lee Lewis, with the attitude and swagger to match, it's tough not to look like a dweeb sitting stationary behi...

When 2008 started, I was sure it was going to be awesome. "It's going to be two-thousand-great," I told anyone who would listen, ignoring the various signs (MTV ringing in the New Year with Tila Tequila, hints of economic collapse, etc.) that things wouldn't exactly go as planned. Or even be much go...

Remember the urban legend about how hard-rocking Van Halen demanded all brown M&Ms be removed from their backstage spreads during the '80s? Well, some 25 years later, it's finally confirmed. The Smoking Gun, which admits to having searched for verification for 10 years now, finally got its hands...