THE BLACKENED BLUES, One Poem at a Time: Tina Turner’s Legs
Sean MurphyI’m happy to announce that my first poetry collection, The Blackened Blues, is available wherever you buy books (yes, *wherever*, so you don’t have to put more money in Rocket Man’s…
Robert Fripp at 75: The King of the Court
Happy 75th to an artist who has not merely helped shape and define whatever it is, exactly, prog rock has managed to encompass, but as a positive force for music:…
Original Poem: Rahsaan Kirk’s Dream
Sneaking in right before the end of Black History Month, my poem "Rahsaan Kirk's Dream" -- a tribute to another one of my all-time heroes: a blind iconoclast who figured…
Rush’s ‘Moving Pictures’ at 40
Every 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…