Rush’s ‘Moving Pictures’ at 40
Sean MurphyEvery band, if they’re lucky, is able to create a definitive work — a document that embodies their unique qualities. Most great bands, at some point in their career, successfully…
Jimi Hendrix: Five Decades Gone
It was 50 years ago, today. Attention, of course, must (and will) be paid, but the real question remains: what more can possibly be said, at this point, about Jimi…
Toots Hibbert: The Force of Life & Love in Music
Was Toots and his 1968 hit “Do the Reggay,” responsible for popularizing both the name and form of reggae that, a few years later — and in no small part…
Charlie Parker: The Bird’s Centennial
Charlie Parker: August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955 Here's a wonderful tribute from the always reliable Richard Brody at The New Yorker. Here's a poem, written toward the end…
Ennio Morricone, The Master
Certain things are anathema to the mature writer: hyperbole, cliché, groupthink, money--just kidding, (mostly). Sometimes, and the instances are rare enough to be exceptions to the rule, one can speak…
The Whiteness of the Whale: Remembering The White Album (Revisited)
Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grand or gracious thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest idealized significance it calls up a peculiar…
Ric Ocasek: Just What We Needed
We tend to believe (or want to believe?) that the best artists emerge, fully-formed, as though they were uncommonly blessed or destined. While in certain cases this impulse is intended…
National Poetry Month #17-19
April, according to this poet, is the cruelest month. April, according to these lovers of poetry, is National Poetry Month, and the only cruelty is metaphorical (which isn’t to say T.S. Eliot was being…
Three Original Poems, published by Sequestrum Journal of Lit & Arts
Sequestrum, Issue 18 Of course you can, and sometimes should, judge a book (or, in this case, a literary magazine) by its cover. The latest issue of Sequestrum, a journal…
David Bowie: Ashes to Ashes (Revisited)
Sordid details following. It’s all in here: summing up practically everything from the ‘70s and previewing so many trends to follow in the ‘80s. Everyone heard this, even if they…