[ A note to readers: There is no central theme to this post, besides what I've been enjoying aurally, visually and intellectually in the last few weeks. I hope you enjoy these short reviews as much as I enjoyed consuming the subject of the reviews.]
1. Radiohead: In Rainbows
There’s been a ton of press on [...]
Labor Day weekend in San Francisco is always fairly quiet because all the cool kids have packed their fur-covered beach cruisers, art projects and drug collections into their gas guzzling SUV’s with “No Blood For Oil!” bumper stickers and caravaned over to Black Rock Desert, Nevada, for the annual non-conformist, anti-capitalist, pro-anarchist, pro-nudity, post-modern, pre-Armageddon [...]
One of the things I love about music is how it frames one’s mental images about events, time and place. A song, album or band might remind you of an era in your life, say a semester in college or a particularly tough breakup; or of a certain activity, driving to high school in your [...]
I’ve been wanting to write the piece you are about to read for several weeks now, and I’ve been thinking about the topic for much longer than that. Yet, as I start to write it, it occurs to me that what I’m writing might detract somewhat from folks’ Christmas spirit, and for that I apologize.
The [...]
One of my favorite pastimes is shopping for and collecting vinyl records. Old recordings, new recordings, hard-to-find recordings, you name it. If it’s an album that I like, or has a song that I like a lot, I need it on vinyl. It’s an odd obsession, perhaps. Odd because it is neither logical nor practical [...]