Author Archives: Joe Nolan
Historic Highs
(Image: “Archaic Revival” by Dani Tull) After some recent posts about the Summer of Love, Brian Jones, Anita Pallenberg, and Swinging London this video caught my eye while I was working on sprucing up my YouTube Channel. You could paint a pretty full picture of the Summer of Love and the culture it inspired just [...]
Love in London
Getting back to posting about this year’s observance of the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, I’m interested in another take on the season that announced the rise of the hippie. While the phrase Summer of Love conjures images of willowy hippy girls and long haired hippie dudes frolicking in San Francisco’s Golden Gate [...]
Cocteau 21C
55 years ago, in 1962, playwright, painter, poet, novelist, and film director Jean Cocteau recorded an address to the people of the world in the year 2000. The artist died the following year on October 11, 1963, and while these aren’t literally his last words they make a nice parting message from one of the [...]
40 Years of Eraserhead
There’s no telling which big tent movie might own the summer, but David Lynch has definitely owned the spring — the new Twin Peaks series is confounding viewers and sparking debate online, and Nashville fans of the man were recently treated to an expansive Lynch retrospective at the Belcourt Theatre. In the middle of all [...]
Jones Jones
A few years ago I stumbled across this biopic about The Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones: Stoned tells the story about the British rockers with an eye on their multi-instrumentalist and original leader. Before Mick and Keith became the Glimmer Twins, The Rolling Stones were Brian’s band. The story goes that Brian got deep into [...]
London Rock
I celebrated a birthday this week and didn’t get back to the blog until this afternoon. It’s starting to feel like summer in Nashville. It’s muggy and warmer, but not exactly hot yet. We sometimes spend weeks in the high 90′s or low 100′s between July and September, but I’m hoping for a milder season [...]
RAW on Crowley
I came across a post on the Lashtal site this weekend — BBC 4 is playing a series about the Summer of Love and the first episode featured two mentions of Aleister Crowley. I found the documentary’s trailer online, but couldn’t manage to find the full episode. I’ll keep and eye open for it, but [...]
Allen Again
It’s Wednesday night and I just got back from a reading event at a friend’s house — a good group of writers and readers and listeners and drinkers and neighbors and old friends and new ones. Hanging out on a cool breezy back screen porch on what must be a perfect springtime evening in Nashville [...]
Nobel 2016 Revisited
Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature. When the award was announced last October, people who care about such things were either elated or outraged: Fans of the man felt that Dylan’s work deserved such lofty accolades, but writerly snobs — the worst snobs — looked down on the troubadour, his popular music, and [...]
