Midweek Music Moment: The Trinity

For reasons ranging from time and interest (or lack of either), it’s been more than a year since I’ve done one of these posts. And I have to admit that the topic of this one actually came up in late summer or early fall. But I’m hoping to resume this a bit, if only sporadically.

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Book Review: How Music Works by John Powell

If there’s one thing that can be said about music, it’s that as much as we may love it we generally don’t want to think about it. After all, music speaks to the emotions, not logic. That’s why if you ask someone about the music they like, you will get a list of genres or [...]

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Indubitably and perhaps irremediably old

Something that had been in the back a my mind for a while really started to sink in with last week’s announcement of the Grammy nominees — age is not only staring me in the face, it is slapping it.

Ever since this blog started, I’ve had an annual post on my record of the [...]

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Brief reflections on Life (Keith Richards’, not mine)

To be honest, I was surprised at the length of Keith Richards’ autobiography, Life. And, all in all, it is far from an insipid celebrity memoir. To the contrary, it provides interesting insight into the guitarist’s life and some of the exaggerated tales of his life. It does ramble a bit but there’s far more [...]

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Dylan treats fans equally, even those named Obama

Anyone who’s attended a Bob Dylan concert knows he is far from a gregarious stage presence. After attending several of his concerts, my wife and I remarked to each other at a show in Minneapolis that he’d actually spoken to the audience other than announcing a song title or saying “Thanks.”

But if you think [...]

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Music Review: Santana, Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time

Sometime in the summer of 1999, I popped Santana’s Supernatural into the CD player in one of our vehicles. From the back seat, I heard one of my kids (aged 8 to 13) ask in the combination disdainful/incredulous tone only kids can achieve, “Since when did you start listening to Santana?” They were just a [...]

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Cultural convergence

There seems to be a cultural convergence happening here. Or maybe I’m just noticing because four of my favorite things are involved — music, books, film and hockey.

It started last night with a George Winston concert. Perhaps because he records on the Windham Hill label, Winston gets placed in the “New Age” category. (Question: [...]

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Midweek Music Moment: Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, Meat Loaf

We all have guilty pleasures — music, books or movies that we’re a bit abashed to admit we enjoy. For me, one of those is Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell.

As the title suggests, the album is the follow-up to Meat Loaf’s first solo album, 1977′s Bat Out of Hell, [...]

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Jackson Browne and David Lindley: Superb

In the few times I’ve seen Jackson Browne in concert, I think it’s always been after David Lindley was no longer part of his road band. I do have a vague recollection of having seen Lindley perform as a sideman, for lack of a better term, at least once before but the brain cells with [...]

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Midweek Music Moment: Songs From an American Movie, Vol. 1: Learning to Smile, Everclear

I’m going to offer up another exhibit on RIAA’s shortsightedness on the original Napster. The first song or songs I heard from Everclear’s Songs From an American Movie, Vol. 1: Learning to Smile, released 10 years ago this week, were Napster downloads. I’d not heard anything by the band before I came across a couple [...]

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