December 2014
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Andrés Segovia I wanted to close out this series with a really important guitarist, and it would be hard to find a more suitable candidate than Segovia, who did so much to bring the guitar into the mainstream of classical music. In a career that spanned the greater part of the 20th century, he advanced the repertoire…
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Mississippi Fred McDowell I wish I could say that when I was growing up in rural Alabama I heard this kind of music alive in its native culture. But I didn't; I heard it on records in the living room of an aunt and uncle who had a great interest, very unusual for white people…
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Then came, at a predetermined moment, a moment in time and of time,A moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history: transecting, bisecting the world of time, a moment in time but not like a moment of time,A moment in time but time was made through that moment: for without the meaning…
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Still happening.
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John McLaughlin McLaughlin is very well known in jazz circles, but I've never really listened to him very much. I heard him back in 1970 or so when he appeared on Miles Davis's Bitches Brew, which I did not really get then and still don't, although it's considered a masterpiece by many. But as with…
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Everyone, I think, including on some suppressed level the participants, recognizes that there is a great deal in the art of the past 70 years or so that is meretricious if not actually fraudulent. Any number of people have pointed this out, but I don't think I've seen a better analysis of the phenomenon than…
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Frank Zappa I want to say more or less the same thing about Frank Zappa now that I did in a 2007 review of Hot Rats, so I may as well not bother rephrasing it, and just quote: I must say right off that I had never taken very seriously Zappa’s ambition to be taken…
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Broadchurch is a really fine British murder mystery, which I strongly recommend. This post is mainly just a place-holder for a discussion which includes TOTAL SPOILERS, because it's really hard to discuss the show without that. I'm moving several comments here from the Movies for the Ages post so that people won't stumble across them…
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Or should I say "Films", since I'm talking about Art? A discussion has been going on under the unlikely auspices of one of the 52 Guitars posts, and it's such an interesting topic that I thought I'd give it a post of its own. Imagine that you're living 400 years from now, in what will…
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Toby D'Anna, who is among the people planning to contribute to the 52 Authors project, and in fact will lead it off with a piece about Flannery O'Connor, has started blogging (again, actually, but the other one was some time ago). It is excellent, and although I've gotten to a point where there aren't really…
Light On Dark Water 