Rendering: Adam Pardee/STAFF. I heard Lionel Richie was talking about redoing “We Are the World.” Awesome, I immediately thought. The COVID has officially dried up the world’s supply of creativity (as I, ironically, desperately searched for a topic two hours before deadline). As you know, there are too many…

Rendering: Adam Pardee/STAFF. Nope … I don’t want you to nominate me to list my 10 most influential brands of granola in 10 days while nominating someone else each day to do same, thereby dragging them into my own personal hell. I’ve come to hate the coronalists. This COVID-19…

Little Richard poses for a portrait in circa 1957. Photo: Michael Ochs. Little Richard will forever be responsible for my daughter’s name. The same could be partially said for Charles Schulz, Lucille Ball’s parents and the person who named my grandmother’s cousin—who, not coincidentally—was terribly nice to me when…

Insert Foot Vs. The Freak follicles I was on a roll, writing this column, liking what I came up, and then … POOF. Gone. Kind of like life before a certain virus decided to kick down everyone’s front door and remind us Mother Nature, and coronavirus, is still boss.…

Insert Foot and the COVID-EO. If I understand this right, live shots from a laptop pointed at your face is the new selfie, thanks to the Covid. That’s what I call it, and that’s what I’m going to call it. It’s not intended to be disrespectful. It’s just that…

Insert Foot and the hope for more great music. Last week I wrote about the Covid-19 pandemic creating opportunities for musicians to reconnect and remember why they became musicians in the first place. Remember? It’s so drummers and Billy Joel can attract women. No, I won’t get over it.…

Dear singer-songwriter stuck in Covid-19 lockdown: You can stop believing you’re going to make the defining piece of minimalist art while sitting at home avoiding showers and running lyrics by your cat. Sorry. Fiona Apple beat you to it, which isn’t surprising. It’s not the first time she’s made…

As far as we know, Tony Hicks is only having one kind of baby as he passes time at home during the COVID-19 quarantine. Some good really can come from this coronavirus mess. In the middle of boring COVID-19 isolation, I just spent more than an hour with 10…

From Candy Loving to the Queen, these are all the people Tony Hicks has wanted to be isolated with over the years. I once swiped one of my stepdad’s Playboy magazines. It probably happened (a lot) more than once … when I was a kid … not lately. I’m…

I didn’t know Bill Withers was black until I’d already come to know his music. As a kid, I constantly confused him with Van Morrison all the time. And I’d seen Morrison on television, so … That’s a huge compliment. To both of them. It was music sounding straight…