Remembering the USS Indianapolis, Robert Shaw and The Scene
Sean MurphyOn July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis, which had just delivered key components of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.…
July 28, 1979: The Long Way Home (Revisited)
If I ever need to check myself and consider what a privileged life I've led, I simply need to recall that moving across town in the summer of '79 was…
Like The Dude, Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson Abides
Few Jethro Tull fans could resist the prospect of a new DVD with more than six hours of live footage. It’s debatable how many fans would be overjoyed to learn…
Classical Music Can Kick Your Ass!
You want a piece of that guy? He reduced pianos to splinters (sort of) and he had the quickest hands in the west. The East, too. Sergei Rachmaninoff is one…
Dennis Farina: Bad Man, Good Actor
And by bad I mean, of course, badass. Nevermind that he actually was a Chicago cop for many years before he "broke in" to acting (See what I did there?).…
Amy Winehouse: Lack of Love is a Losing Game (Revisited)
Last year, when I was making the list of what I considered the 50 best (rock) albums of the decade, I had this to say about Amy Winehouse's Back To…
From The Annals of Inscrutability…Robert Plant! (Revisited)
3/2/2011: After praising The Marshall Tucker Band I reckon it's time to break out the big guns. Everyone can list a handful --or more-- songs that have presented lyrical challenges.…
One Small Step for Man’s Mind
Check it out: there are people who actually believe that the moon landing never happened. Lots of people. Not that it didn’t happen, necessarily, but that it was an elaborate,…
T-Model Ford, R.I.P.
Slowly, steadily, inexorably, they are leaving the planet. One at a time. We will never see men like this again. American-made in every sense of the phrase, they came up…
Titoro, Three Times (Revisited)
An amazing tune by Billy Taylor, played three times. The first one is coupled with the incredible "Oscalypso" (which is also covered in fine fashion by Curtis Fuller and my personal…