Music
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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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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…
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[Note: There are seven links to YouTube videos in this piece. I more or less arbitrarily picked the first and last to embed for quick access, but thought embedding them all might make the page annoyingly slow to load.–Ed.] At some point when I was a teenager I thought I should like John Cale. I…
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I'm going to start posting these on Thursday instead of Wednesday. That puts it closer to the middle of the week between Sunday Night Journals, which are posted either late Sunday or early Monday. My intention will be to post them first thing Thursday mornings, although occasional lapses are possible.
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My best estimate is that it was 1983 when my friend Robert sent me a cassette of which one side (and maybe a bit of overflow to the other side) was Rupert Hines’s 1982 release Waving Not Drowning. I don’t remember what else was on the tape, and it’s gone now. I think it broke…
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I will happily accept that I am about as unmusical as it is possible to be without actually being tone deaf. It surprised me last year to notice that my contributions to the 52 Movies series focused on films with striking soundtracks, but I suppose in those cases the music serves a broader storytelling purpose.…
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As far back as I can remember, I was surrounded by record albums. My father loved music and I grew up singing along with Steve and Eydie, Keely Smith, Della Reese, and so many more—and Broadway musicals. But those were my father's albums. Later on, sitting in my grandparents' bedroom while the adults talked in…
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Here it is, Friday, December 30, 2016. Wednesday of next week will be January 4th, and I've been planning to kick off the 52 Albums series then, assuming there is still interest. As I discussed in a comment thread a few weeks ago, I want to do this one a bit differently. Rather than having…
Light On Dark Water 