A decade later, on the then twenty-three-year-old Van Morrison’s 1968 album Astral Weeks.

Reposted after it was pulled by The Atlantic:
How the little known $50/bottle champagne Antique Gold became the $300/bottle Armand de Brignac that Jay-Z “happened upon in a wine shop” and then featured in a video.

On the many lives and careers of Owsley Stanley (1935-2011), chemist, sound design innovator, and outback jeweler, whose name appears in the OED as a synonym for “a particularly pure form of LSD.”

An oral history of the Strokes.

“By the time we got to Woodstock 99 …” In a grim finale, the nineties get their Altamont.

Six months after playing an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival, a rambling Dylan holds forth on style, songwriting, and fame. “People have one great blessing—obscurity—and not really too many people are thankful for it.”

“You’re either with Korn and Limp Bizkit, or you’re against them.” The birth of nu-metal.

On Sam Cooke, theme parties, and the importance of McDonald’s-related jingles when street performing.

On the young and ascendant Frank Sinatra, “who ruled crowds by seductive magnetism and surrounded himself with courtiers, but had once been an adolescent alone in his room listening to Bing Crosby on his Atwater-Kent.”

Here’s what I really want to do at 32: fuck a girl and then, as she’s sleeping in bed, make breakfast for her. So she’s like, “What? You gave me five vaginal orgasms last night, and you’re making me a spinach omelet? You are the shit!” So she says, “I love this guy.” I say, “I love this girl loving me.” And then we have a problem.

Walter Benjamin, mp3s, and what collecting says about us.

A profile of Winona Ryder.

A profile of Chicago soul great Syl Johnson.

Jay-Z on his new book Decoded, his parents’ record collection, and the real reason rappers have a tendency to grab their junk on stage.

On the mysterious life story of blues icon Blind Willie Johnson and a half-century of attempts to fill in the blanks.

A profile of of Courtney Love.

“I hate classical music: not the thing but the name. It traps a tenaciously living art in a theme park of the past. It cancels out the possibility that music in the spirit of Beethoven could still be created today.”

A single-page version of Shalhoup’s reporting on the Black Mafia Family, one of the largest cocaine empires in American history.

Featuring the debut of the “Ghost Sex Defense.”

The “Shaggy Defense,” the “Little Man Defense,” and more—live from R. Kelly’s 2008 child pornography trial.

Four years after a disastrous MTV performance had led him to avoid the public, Rose was back on stage.

Scenes from Madonna’s first major tour and an author struggling to explain the 26-year-old’s massive, surging appeal.

A profile of Kanye West written in the style of an all-access magazine piece - using only quotes and statements that Kanye West has made on Twitter and other web outlets.

Horror-rap’s annual festival draws thousands of clown-makeup wearing Juggalos - devotees of Insane Clown Posse - for a weekend devoted to spraying Faygo soda, rioting, and discussions of the occult.

When Bob Dylan met Allen Ginsberg; a chapter from Sean Wilentz’s forthcoming Bob Dylan in America.