It happens just when you think all the conversations have dissipated into dust. All of the portals into the cosmos are closed for repair — Saturday night, flannel, the café, as good as boarded up. A band comes along steeps its own flavor into something completely fresh and new and once again the art form […]
Starting in about 1997 or so, Comedy Central (which was at that point I think still a pretty new entity) would air this show called Sports Night. The premise of the show, which was in the format of a 30-minute sit com [1] sans canned background laughter, was a behind-the-scenes look at a fictitious show […]
If it seems from generally reading my website that I’m not the biggest Bruce Springsteen fanatic it’s probably because… I’m not the biggest Bruce Springsteen fanatic. And no, I absolutely don’t mean to say at all that I don’t like him. Growing up, I had experiences with him, aside from admittedly thinking “Born in the […]
I should probably have some high-falutin’, memorable adage with which to open this post. And no, not because Common needs his slow jams. I mean because of this virus shutdown. One main thing I miss, to be honest, is sports, and in fact my TV’s only gotten turned on one time since the last Michigan […]
Well, we’re certainly this month witnessing something apparently pretty special in the music world: an album, Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters, that has thus far garnered a perfect Metacritic rating, 100 out of 100. To put things in perspective, this is really hard to do and no musician of whom I’m AWARE has ever […]
I’ve been doing all these big shot lists lately as a sort of feel-good ploy during the COVID pandemic but much to my annoyance, I’ve recently just noticed that I totally forgot Jane’s Addiction on my ’80s and ’90s ones. More than likely, if nothing else, “Jane Says” should have graced that ’80s post — […]
Really? I couldn’t believe it when I went on Wikipedia and saw how much praise The Soft Bulletin had got across the board. I’d even forgot that Pitchfork had slotted it #3 album of the 1990’s. So I thought I’d go to Pitchfork and see what all the hullabaloo was all about, since generally to […]
Spotify playlist. Excellent for shuffling. “I Thought I Held You” (A.M.) “That’s Not the Issue” (A.M.) “Outtasite (Outta Mind)” (Being There) “Say You Miss me” (Being There) “Someday Soon” (Being There) “Can’t Stand it” (Summerteeth) “I’m Always in Love” (Summerteeth) “Nothing’severgonnastandinmyway (Again)” (Summerteeth) “Ashes of American Flags” (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot) “Pot Kettle Black” (Yankee Hotel […]
I’m reading this Phil Lesh memoir and though it’s definitely pretty interesting and well written, much like Jorma Kaukonen’s work, he at one point mentions “the beats” (meaning the beat poetry movement) and I just have to say I smell a big time rat with the whole thing. For instance Lesh makes the claim that […]
The melodies are INTRICATE on Either/Or, especially given the framework of just one singer/songwriter and his acoustic guitar and voice, soundtracking the entire album. Right there in the seemingly unassuming opener “Speed Trials,” for instance, we have this incredibly subtle, almost untraceable key change immersed in the chorus at an apparently random type (whereas Led […]