Tag Archives: Music
DJ Dick
As someone who spends a lot of time writing I can often be found at my desk at home or at the library or in a corner of a coffeehouse typing away with my headphones on. Here’s a little secret: I’m almost never listening to anything. If I’m reviewing a film or working on my [...]
Sedona Songs 5
I woke up super early on Thursday, and after getting up at about 4AM I went back to sleep before starting my day at about 8:45. The time change has me a bit off, and the Arizona heat/humidity/light factors are sometimes just the opposite of what they are in Nashville. That said, we had another [...]
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 [...]
Glenn Gone
Last Friday I was posting the latest From the Archives pick when I read about Glenn O’Brien’s passing in The Guardian. Here’s the word… Glenn O’Brien, the New York cultural figure who was an author, musician, magazine editor, style guru, TV host and key figure at Andy Warhol’s Factory, has died aged 70. Described by [...]
Sounds of Scientology
Religion is a lot of things, but most obviously we can distinguish one sect, order, school or institution from another through their trappings: robes, candles, books, paintings, statues, gestures, poses and music. Music is central to faiths all over the world – songs are emissaries of religious stories, time capsules of historical events and they [...]
Tom Again
I love the Blank on Blank project’s animated takes on archived interviews. In this episode Tom Waits waxes on Stonehenge, Hawaii and everything in between. Here’s the lowdown… Waits had just released the concert film, Big Time, when he was interviewed by Chris Roberts at a London recording studio; you can hear music playing softly [...]
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 [...]
Saint Martin’s Day
This week, we celebrate Martin Scorsese’s 72nd birthday (November 17, 1942). Obviously, Scorsese is one of my favorite directors, and the filmmaker who cracked my head open with Raging Bull, showing me the difference between movies and cinema just as The Old Man and the Sea revealed to me the difference between literature and a [...]
Party at Worthy Farm
Today marks the anniversary of the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, first held on this day in 1970 on Michael Eavis’s family farm in Pilton, Somerset. Along with the utopian idealism of the time came an invention of the “free” music festival, a social movement based on collaboration and responsibility for one’s own expectations. [...]
Adam Raised a Cain
Played a show on Wednesday night and premiered this re-working of the 1977 Bruce Springsteen song “Adam Raised a Cain.” I was just messing around with the chords a few months back and working on the song while rehearsing other material for the shows I’ve been doing lately. It occurred to me that the biblical [...]
