February 2017
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In his review of SHEL, the group and the album, Robert Gotcher mentioned that their second album "is not nearly as good. They seem to have lost some of the innocence from the first album." I was reminded of this review, which I wrote ten years ago, of the first album by a group called Au…
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This is not going to be an elaborate and insightful review of this album or Atkins. What can be said? He is the consummate musician, an amazing and versatile guitarist. He doesn’t pretend to be relevant or important or socially significant or insightful. He simply entertains by producing dazzling guitar. And, unlike, say, Les Paul,…
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It was not long after Pope Francis was elected that I remarked to my wife that he seemed like someone who would be a wonderful parish priest, but I wasn't so sure that he would be good at running the Church. I've said it several times since, and it looks like there was something in it.…
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There was a moment in the mid-1960s when the irreverent new sensibility of English pop music met traditional culture on friendly terms: detached and maybe a little critical, but affectionate. You can hear it in some of the Beatles’ work—“Penny Lane,” for instance. In some of The Who’s songs. In Small Faces’ Ogdens’ Nut Gone…
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Yesterday, I started to write a comment on the Favorites of the Year thread saying that my problem with the thread was that every find that I had last year was a movie or book that I learned about on this blog, so everyone else already knew about them, and we had already discussed them.…
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For most of my adult life, until I was getting near fifty or so, I spent a lot of time thinking about What Was Wrong with Society and what Society ought to be like. I tended to assume that Society was fundamentally messed up and therefore must be fundamentally changed. When I was twenty this change…
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I used to be one of those people who thought the Beatles were the best musicians ever. I thought their compositions, arrangements, instrumentation, etc. were genius. My opinion of them has diminished considerably in the past few years. Now I find their music to be simplistic. McCartney is a great tune-smith and their instrumental work…
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Please use the comments on this post to discuss your favorite books, music, movies, etc. of the year. This post won't be at the top of the blog for very long, but there's a link to it in the "Here" section of the sidebar.
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I'm beginning to suspect that Jean-Luc Godard is an over-rated filmmaker. Or at least that I don't care very much for his work. Maybe ten years ago I saw Band of Outsiders (Bande à Part), and really liked it. But I suspect that may have been only because of a few charming scenes involving the beautiful and…
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Imagine my surprise. Although I had read about it in Rolling Stone magazine and bought the cassette tape soon upon its release I was not prepared for the first song, or many thereafter. Rain Dogs sounded shockingly original and amazingly good, and since then I have collected through the years most of Tom Waits’ other…
Light On Dark Water 