"Smiling" Billy Higgins. On any self-respecting jazz fan's extra short-list of all-time greatest drummers. He didn't just act as the de facto session drummer for Blue Note in the '60s,…
Sound Affects The PopMatters Music Blog Pop Past 17 November 2008 Mitch Mitchell: The Perfect Engine Not for nothing was the band called The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Certainly, Hendrix did—and…
Not winter yet, but it's close. Dark even before the sun sets, cold even when you turn the heat on. You know better than to try to sleep, so it’s…
I. Personal Remember when Born in the U.S.A. was ubiquitous? The album and the song. Bruce was already big, but he wasn’t over the top. Born in the U.S.A. put…
A.M.: Departure Early, at the airport. Look around: some of the pretty people, many of the mediocre, and the rest of us, all sizes and shapes: men trying to look…
Speaking of clichés, every time I watch a foreign film—recent, older, ancient, it doesn’t matter—I fall helplessly, irretrievably in love with the leading lady (whether she is German, Russian,…
When Obama takes office in January of 2009, it will be a half-century since Free Jazz forefather Ornette Coleman dropped the provocatively titled "The Shape of Jazz to Come". 1959…
On the dissolving horizon the sky looks good enough to eat: orange sorbet on a dark purple plate; overhead black birds want in on the action, circling one another, entwined…
The only thing more impressive than the acting is the direction. The only thing more astonishing than the direction is the story. The only thing more miraculous than the…
Sean Murphy