Classical Music Can Kick Your Ass!
Sean MurphyYou want a piece of that guy? He reduced pianos to splinters (sort of) and he had the quickest hands in the west. The East, too. Sergei Rachmaninoff is one…
Dennis Farina: Bad Man, Good Actor
And by bad I mean, of course, badass. Nevermind that he actually was a Chicago cop for many years before he "broke in" to acting (See what I did there?).…
Amy Winehouse: Lack of Love is a Losing Game (Revisited)
Last year, when I was making the list of what I considered the 50 best (rock) albums of the decade, I had this to say about Amy Winehouse's Back To…
From The Annals of Inscrutability…Robert Plant! (Revisited)
3/2/2011: After praising The Marshall Tucker Band I reckon it's time to break out the big guns. Everyone can list a handful --or more-- songs that have presented lyrical challenges.…
One Small Step for Man’s Mind
Check it out: there are people who actually believe that the moon landing never happened. Lots of people. Not that it didn’t happen, necessarily, but that it was an elaborate,…
T-Model Ford, R.I.P.
Slowly, steadily, inexorably, they are leaving the planet. One at a time. We will never see men like this again. American-made in every sense of the phrase, they came up…
Titoro, Three Times (Revisited)
An amazing tune by Billy Taylor, played three times. The first one is coupled with the incredible "Oscalypso" (which is also covered in fine fashion by Curtis Fuller and my personal…
Improving Upon Perfection, Part Seven
(Parts 1-6 of this series here, here, here, here, here and here.) Having just written, at length, about King Crimson (check it HERE), it seems appropriate to revisit another song…
Technology and Privacy, Cont’d…
The ongoing controversy surrounding Edward Snowden has reminded me that the issues of privacy are not recent. Indeed, the notion of "other people" knowing what you are doing at all…
Mingus Speaks. We Listen.
Charles Mingus did not do small. He was a big man, with big appetites, big ambitions, big grievances, big passions, big skills, and above all, a big vision. By any…