MLK: Remembering The Man and Acknowledging Unfinished Business
Sean Murphy"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." --Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963) All we need…
Top 50 Albums of the Decade, Part Five (Revisited)
10. The Fiery Furnaces, Bitter Tea (2006) It's a funny thing: as decidedly out there as this effort obviously is, compared to the album that preceded it, Bitter Tea is…
Some Day A Real Rain Will Come: What Travis Bickle Can –And Cannot– Tell Us About Tucson
Voices In Our Heads You talking to me? It is the pivotal scene in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and it remains one of the seminal moments in movie history. Not so…
The Boss, The Big Man and The Best Rock Song of the ’70s*
When the change was made uptown and the Big Man joined the band... The rest was history, wasn't it? I am, of course, quoting from "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out", the second…
Top 50 Albums of the Decade, Part Four (Revisited)
20. Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine (2005) Mad genius? Compulsive artiste? Fragile chanteuse? Misunderstood icon? All of the above? More? Whatever it is (and it could be none of this), there…
Top 50 Albums of the Decade, Part Three (Revisited)
30. Sonic Youth, Murray Street (2002) Some might say Sonic Youth did their best work in the '80s; some may claim it was the '90s; others may insist they reached…
Right Down The Line: R.I.P., Gerry Rafferty
A considerable component of what made the '70s so awesome has, sadly, left the building we call Earth. And so it is on the unfortunate occasion of Gerry Rafferty's premature…
Top 50 Albums of the Decade, Part Two (Revisited)
40. Cornershop, Handcream For A Generation (2002) It seemed too good to be true that this band became one of the big stories in 1997 with their breakthrough When I…
Top 50 Albums of the Decade, Part One (Revisited)
Facebook friends, Bloggers, Strangers, lend me your ears; I come to bury the last decade, not to praise it. Actually, I do want to praise it, but I first must…
2010: Time To Die (Part Two: July-December)
2010: In pace requiescat! This one hurt. The spectacular career of Bob Probert had already ended; his life ended entirely too soon (at the absurdly young age of 45), on…