For reasons I really ought to turn into a memoir, I maintain a deeply abiding and psychologically unhealthy passion for music and movies from 1979-80, my 10th year on this mostly blue marble.
George Benson
A&M Records Highlights
Music moguls have rarely been as monumentally influential as Jerry Moss was. Last week’s loss of the M half of A&M Records — Herb Alpert, the A, is still kicking at 88, the same age his partner reached — rises to a level of recognition reserved for legendary scene-shapers such as Mo Ostin at Warner/Reprise or Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic. Like those fellow Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, Moss was a crucial titan with a decades-deep effect on careers and stylistic shifts.