I was watching the horror movie “1408,” based on a Stephen King story. I was pleasantly surprised to find it better than the reviews had led me to expect. John Cusack stars as a ghost story debunker who finally finds a story he can’t debunk in hotel suite 1408. The wicked spirits that haunt the…
A Conversation with Captain Trips
“What a long strange trip it’s been,” Robert Hunter, “Truckin’” Forty years ago this weekend, on July 3rd 1970, I spent a couple of hours talking with Jerry Garcia. I was 19, and he was as close to a hero as I had. How my own journey came to brush up again the Grateful Dead’s…
Bach and the Beatles
The Beatles and Bach stand at opposite poles of my musical life, two great pillars on which my career stands. Without them I’d be a geologist or some kind of computer geek. I’ve chronicled Bach’s influence on me and will do so with the Beatles in the near future. What brings the Beatles and Bach…
More More More!!! Part 2-The Spinners, the Stylistics, and the Genius of Thom Bell
One of the few oases that got me through the desert of ‘70s pop music was the sweet soul coming from bands out of Philadelphia such as the Stylistics and the Spinners. The genius behind them, writing, arranging, producing and playing keyboards, was Jamaican born Thom Bell. I first became aware of him in 1970…
Third Grace Update
So, my third grace Vanessa Carlton has come out as a….whatever. It’s none of my business.I couldn’t care less about her love life. What I love is her music. The big news I want to hear is when that forth album is coming out. Is it coming out at all? Well, maybe all the hoopla…
Guilty Pleasures: The Beach Boys
Part 2 – The Warmth of the Sun I could come to the neat conclusion that the Beach Boys are part wonderful, part terrible and some strange, and leave it at that. But there’s a deeper truth hiding in their contradictions. The Beach Boys are the quintessential American band. Not just because they sold more…
Guilty Pleasures: The Beach Boys
Part 1 Given the fallen state of Rock music in recent decades, I felt it my duty as a father to try to turn my sons on to some of the great stuff of Rock’s golden age in the ‘60s. I was pleased when they went enthusiastically for the Beatles, Dylan, Motown and Hendrix with…
Ick Factor – 10 Worst Songs of the ’60s
Creepy, psychotic, and just plain terrible. 60’s music at its best (see previous post) expresses the boundless optimism of that time, people’s hopes for freedom from oppression and repression. But that decade was also dark, with heroes assassinated, endless killing in Vietnam, cities burning….and some very, very bad songs. image by laurakgibbs via flickr 1….
Fishin’ Blues Part 3: Ear Worms
“Nobody likes me, Everybody hates me, Guess I’ll go eat worms” –Children’s song The earworm is a special sub category of the hook. While a good hook makes you long to hear the song again, an earworm compels it, crawling into your ear and making the song play all by itself…
Fishin’ Blues Part 2: Ear Candy
Part 2: Ear Candy “Hand me my old guitar Pass the whiskey round Won’t you tell everybody you meet that the Candyman’s in town Look out, look out, the Candyman Here he come and he’s gone again” – Hunter, Garcia At the beginning of the ‘80s, I began hearing a new term: Ear Candy…
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