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Book Review: Bruce by Peter Ames Carlin

Like perhaps most everyone, occasionally something strikes you that makes you think about those three or five people, dead or alive, you would invite to dinner if your could. Now anyone who reads this blog might well think that Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen are on the “must invite” list. To be honest, though, I […]

A bit of memoir mania

I’ve never investigated if publishers push autobiographies and memoirs to a particular time of year. All I know is they’ve dominated my reading lately.

Four of the last five books I’ve read (and five of the last eight) are autobiographies/memoirs. (Who decides when a work crosses the line between autobiography and memoir?) All four […]

Book Review: My Dead Dad Was in ZZ Top by Jon Glaser

Although many may consider it a less important symbol than the dollar sign, never underestimate the power of the asterisk. Jon Glaser certainly doesn’t.

After being estranged for years, Glaser was going through his father’s belongings following his death when he stumbled across rock and roll history.* He learned his father was a member of […]

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 […]

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, […]