Tom Wilkes, who created some of the most memorable images of my youth, died June 28 in the high desert east of Los Angeles at age 69 of a heart attack. I learned of it today, reading his New York Times obituary. For years his artwork adorned album covers and poster art, one of the [...]
I’m certain I’ve posted this video a number of times elsewhere; I suppose I hope it will find someone who appreciates it as much as I do. These are consummate professional musicians playing a brilliant jazz tune before an appreciative crowd in Montreaux and enjoying themselves as they do. In my book, music doesn’t get [...]
Sometimes the world needs a little vampish, expressive, drama queen music. No one fits the bill as articulately and as melodically as singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Shara Worden. If dream pop can ever be called good, this is an instance.
My friend Jess, who lives in Okinawa and has shared photos of the island with me via Tumblr, played Cat Stevens’ “Oh Very Young” yesterday, and while I’m reasonably certain her playing of the classic was filled with a deeper meaning that probably escapes me, my subsequent playing of “Rubylove” is all about the melody, [...]
Paul McCartney, in what is either a brilliant marketing ploy or a relentless search for the glory days of his youth, played a set on the roof of the Ed Sullivan Building yesterday to an audience of thousands of surprised New Yorkers. The 20-plus-minute concert was “reminiscent of the live set The Beatles played on [...]
Let’s face it: most of us didn’t even know what Scylla and Charybdis were until we heard Sting sing about them in a three-minute pop song, and a great many of us didn’t care — we just craved the groove. Perhaps Sting’s literary references were part of what led writers at Blender magazine to name [...]
Lately, in an effort to rediscover a fire my writing has lacked for some years, I have been absorbed in the darker side of human emotion, obsessed with archaic notions of possession, all-encompassing passion, and white-hot jealousy. All these are frowned upon at a time when personal freedom is enshrined as the holiest of human [...]
For years after I first heard Sketches of Spain I put people into two categories: those who “got” Miles Davis and those who didn’t. During the same period, his music was the measure of my chauvinism. I simply could not befriend anyone who would not sit still through the entire first side of Kind of [...]
What a strange day to discover “Cherchez L’Erreur” by Donovan and Zouzou, especially when the past is a poignant ache and the evening sky is pondering tornados. I have no idea what one thing has to do with the other. I’m simply the observer.
I had forgotten what an integral part of the 1954 “Sabrina” soundtrack “La Vie en Rose” played. Audrey Hepburn’s quiet lip-sync of the tune as Humphrey Bogart drives her home is central to the film’s plot. It is arguably the ultimate romantic song. While Louis Armstrong’s rendition remains my favorite and, of course, Edith Piaf’s [...]