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I've been away for Thanksgiving Day—will take up some of the topics in the comments sometime on Friday. Hope all of you in the USA, which I think is the vast majority of people who read this blog, had a good holiday. I find that being congenitally pessimistic actually makes me more thankful—I can so…
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I thought this merited emphasis and a separate discussion. Francesca Murphy brought up this New Criterion article by Mark Steyn in which he describes the omnipresence of pop music in public places as turning our lives into "a movie with a bad sound track." Steyn is writing in the context of a New Criterion retrospective…
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I was going to post something by and about Judee Sill as a follow-up to the surprisingly active discussion about female musicians. Sill is one of the major figures in this category, even though she only released two full albums. But Daniel tells me he's going to post something about her on the Caelum et…
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Bob Marley & The Wailers: The Complete Upsetter Singles 1970-1972 I’m actually talking about the first volume of this two-disk set here; the second disk seems to be dub versions—mostly-instrumental “remixes,” as they would be called today—of some of the songs on the first disk. (Since eMusic charges per song, I’ve downloaded only the first…
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…about the origin of the universe: in a comment a day or two ago, Jack quoted this from Benedict XVI's Introduction to Christianity. I think it deserves emphasis: Christian belief in God means that things are the being-thought of a creative consciousness, of a creative freedom, and that the creative consciousness that bears up all…
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Driving a tractor. Those were the days: driving in circles or stripes for hours at a time, smoking cigarettes, thinking about whatever I wanted to, having baloney and crackers and an RC for lunch, now and then enjoying a summer rain. Yes, it was usually hot and dusty, but my thoughts were my own. And…
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The following is a reasonably accurate transcript of an actual conversation that took place at my house recently: He: This silly management training thing we're doing at work…it tries to put people into one of four boxes based on a few questions. But of course it's not very accurate. I mean, some of the things…
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Inappropriate Use of the Word “Inappropriate” Sometime in the past month or two over on the Thursday Night Gumbo blog (see link in sidebar at right), in a thread that I’m too lazy to try to locate now, Francesca Murphy observed that people who use the word “inappropriate” are generally fascists, or at least control…
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Patty Griffin: Impossible Dream Patty Griffin can do everything. She has one of the best voices in popular music, going with apparent effortlessness from a fully sung whisper to a bluesy croon to a roof-lifting shout to a Dolly Parton warble. If she chose to specialize in blues or country or rock, she’d be in…
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No, not Russell—Rashaan Roland. I seem to be getting into the habit of posting a music video every weekend. One of my offspring sent me this one. As I said to him, I heard a little of Kirk’s music years ago, and I knew he was playing two horns, but it’s another thing to see…
Light On Dark Water 