I don’t know that I’ve ever done this before, copying a post from Facebook to here. But this really seemed to strike a chord with people. I tweaked it just a hair, because more room, and never give me more room! But, mostly, no. Oh, I did, I do, love me some Sly Stone. On …
The great, the late … When I was just newly a teenager, my older sister Michele’s next-door neighbor friend Lori kindly loaned me a bunch of albums, stuff she thought maybe I’d be into. Much of it I didn’t go for, and still don’t, like REO Speedwagon, which was way too treacly sweet for my …
I’ve never shared a link to one of my own pages of past newspaper writing here as its own blog post however, the response in just the couple of days since I originally added this almost-30-year-old story to this site, and then mentioned it on social media, has been kind of amazing. It really seemed …
Earlier today, with no forewarning, I was blindsided by a 1978 TV clip of Donnie and Marie. As in Osmond. As in Devil, get behind me!/Jayzus take me now! They were performing, as a corn-fed TV-variety-show number, “Reelin’ in the Years,” the disarming 1973 hit by Steely Dan. The great Steely Dan. That now defunct, …
Dylan on a Sheridan Square bench in the West Village, New York, N.Y., Jan. 22, 1965. Photo by Fred. W. McDarrah/Getty Images, as also with the one below. My adoration of Bob Dylan 1965-66 is akin to what rowdy religious types have for crucifixions and blue-eyed saviors, upward-mobility reincarnations and a heaven tripping over itself …
Hey, 2019, how’s about not being a fucking bastard, huh? Because after these past couple of humdinger years, I seriously don’t trust any of you any longer to get it right.
When I die, and everything I have seen thus far in life suggests this will happen, despite my best efforts to pretend that black-gowned bony fella with the scythe who keeps inching closer in my rear-view mirror is just a very persistent and poorly dressed itinerant wheat farmer with a moonlighting Amway gig, and everything …
I find myself increasingly disconsolate. I have been singing (mezzo-baritone), as you know, in that five-man barbershop quartet, Ring-a-Lung-Dung, which interprets the works of overzealous German nationalist composer Richard Wagner (of “Ride of the Valkyries” fame) through hand-puppet mime performances. We routinely give our all, outfitted in “Scream” masks and tight beige leotards, to overemphasize …
As I have delved even deeper into the music and writings of Leonard Cohen since his passing, searching for a particle of solace in what has been for me a profound loss, I am struck, again and again, by the thought that we simply did not deserve him, this sage of a man, nor his …
Never have given half a rip for country music, as country music is today, all truck-lovin’ light-beer bros in over-styled cowboy hats gulping on the last note or two to get it to twang. But Merle Haggard. Now, Merle Haggard. Deeply grateful I once got to interview this raucous gem of a man, by phone, …