Blog Archives
Vintage John Lennon Cartoon
Recently, I was browsing through stories via Flipboard and I came across this delightful piece about a vintage animated short film based on John Lennon’s instantly recognizable cartoon doodles. Here’s a bit from the Brain Pickings site… …six years after the beloved Beatle’s assassination, Ono commissioned independent animator John Canemaker to create a short animated [...]
Forever Young
Neil Young is in the headlines again, saying that Donald Trump’s use of the singer/songwriter’s “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World” in Trump’s newly-announced presidential campaign is not authorized. Young has also said that he’s a longtime supporter of Bernie Sanders. The song is an odd choice for a Republican as the song’s lyrics [...]
Forever Ornette
My first instrument was the saxophone. That instrument introduced me to performing music and if I hadn’t started playing my horn at the age of 11 I probably would have never started writing my own songs. I still love my saxophone. Even though my singer/songwriter output is balanced on my lyrics, playing the saxophone offers [...]
Lost Beatle
It’s the time of the year when we remember the “Fifth Beatle,” Stuart Sutcliffe who started “The Beetles” with John Lennon before his untimely death at the age of only 21 on April 10, 1962. Stuart was the band’s original bass player as well as a dedicated painter who left the band to pursue a [...]
Grungespiracies
Over the weekend, while many of us were involved in some kind of springtime revelry whether motivated by Easter, the equinox, the lunar eclipse or just the general retreat of the winter weather, I enjoyed a fun Saturday night and a lazy Sunday: I played a set at the Melodia Studio open house on Saturday [...]
Nina Simone: The Legend
I first heard about Nina Simone while reading Sam Shepard biographies which always mention his working as a busboy at the Village Gate, refilling the diva’s ice water glass during her performances in New York in the 1960′s. It was only years later that I fell under her spell and I still think her take [...]
Science + Art = Symmetry
We often think of science and art as opposites that might never meet. In truth, the two have always had much in common and this new meeting of opera and particle physics demonstrates that we humans are at our best when our intellects and our imaginations combine and cooperate. The site for the new Symmetry [...]
John & Yoko TV Movie
Five years after his assassination, this made-for-television drama tells the story of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. I wasn’t aware of John and Yoko a Love Story before my girlfriend discovered it online, but it’s definitely worth watching. The 1985 flick picks up at the height of the fallout of John’s comments about The Beatles [...]
Dylan, Electrified
50 years ago, Bob Dylan released Bringing It All Back Home. Side two of the album featured the acoustic sound that most of the singer/songwriter’s fans may have expected — Dylan’s previous release, Another Side of Bob Dylan, found the artist abandoning the topical subjects that marked his earlier releases in favor of increasingly hypnotic [...]
