Newt, Not The Onion
Sean MurphySomeone has needed to pull a Josey Wales on Newt Gingrich for a very long time. It turns out he can do it just fine himself, thank you very little.…
Mozart and Mahler, Klezmer Style Courtesy of Uri Caine
I've been holding on to these clips for a while, but today, on the one hundredth anniversary of Mahler's death, it seems appropriate to celebrate them. From Symphony no. 5,…
Curiosity Can’t Kill The Cat or, Art Becomes Life*
I. You Can’t Go Home Again, someone once wrote And he was wrong. Of course you can—all you have to do is never leave— Leaving it behind does not mean…
King Crimson: In the Wake of Poseidon (40th Anniversary Series)
Considering that the only constant within King Crimson was change, the quality of their early albums is, in hindsight, even more remarkable. Poised to conquer the world, or at least…
14 Songs For Turning 41
To know the man, get to know his music. (Or, to paraphrase Al Pacino in Serpico, "If you love the man's music, you have to love the man!") There are…
Progressive Rock With a Capital P: Traffic’s ‘John Barleycorn Must Die’
One difficulty with talking intelligently about much of the amazing music made in the ‘70s is that it is so often lazily lumped together. Classic Rock, Progressive Rock, Freedom Rock,…
Robert Johnson: The Centennial of an American Genius
Does any single figure loom as large over an art form as Robert Johnson? Bach and Shakespeare come to mind, but classical music, like literature, took centuries and multiple…
What’s It All About, Then? Part Four: Jazz, Featuring McCoy Tyner
It occurs to me that I've said little, on the record, about McCoy Tyner. This is a shame, since he is one of my all-time favorite musicians and a case…
Props on Pops (Revisited)
I have written more than once about my mother (here and here) but I haven't said a great deal (here) about my old man. That is, in part, because he…
No One Has Ever Done Anything as Well as John Coltrane Played the Saxophone (Revisited)
The question isn’t, really, about who might be interested in this documentary; it is about who might not be. For fans who already know everything, or those indifferent to jazz…