I’ve been vowing for a very long time to return to the harmonica. My only instrumental training as a child was keyboard lessons as a teenager; my mother won a Kimball organ on the Hollywood Squares (seriously), and for a couple of years I took lessons from a guy who, after he left our house, went [...]
So today, the perfect segue from a bunch of writing about the life of the prof, to what (this) prof loves writing about: popular music. With a couple of colleagues, I’ve proposed a panel for an upcoming popular music conference on the topic of the urban/rural/suburban matrices of post-Woodstock music (roughly). One of us is [...]
On October 5, I complained about the banality of most pop songs about domestic bliss, and adduced as an example Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Our House.” (Oh, and by the way: I realize it appears on Déjà Vu, a CSNY album; but Neil’s entirely absent from “Our House.” The man has taste: you’ve gotta give [...]
Robyn & I recently watched an episode of 30 Rock—best exercise DVDs ever—in which one of the subplots was Tracy Jordan’s becoming obsessed with Hollywood’s “Rule of Three”: bad things happen in threes. Where there’s a high-profile celebrity death, two more are bound to follow in short order. Of course, it’s a perfectly self-fulfilling prophecy: [...]
So I’ve promised to write about a couple of smackdowns: “Our House” (CSN) v. “Our House” (Madness), and also “Green Eyes” (Coldplay) vs. “Green Eyes” (Husker Du). And I will: need a couple more days, though. In the meantime, another train of thought inspired by A Rush of Blood to the Head. I argued, or [...]
[Today's lovely post comes courtesy of fcrp regular Susie Allen. Susie's currently embarking on her second year as a Real Person, having graduated from the University of Chicago in 2009 with degrees in the lucrative and practical fields of English and French Literature. She now works at the U. of C.'s News Office. When not [...]
Heh heh heh. Heh heh heh heh heh. So back over summer (August 4–5), I got into some good-natured mud wrestling with some of fcrp’s good readers about Steely Dan. To wit: All the predictors would suggest that I should like them, but I don’t. Boy, don’t I. Meanwhile readers and friends like Len and [...]
As promised/threatened yesterday—and what a vibrant conversation yesterday, y’all!—I want to work through some impressions of The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006), a pretty riveting documentary recommended to me by fcrp reader Steve. It turned out to be a great way to redeem a long stretch of otherwise exasperating insomnia last week. But you don’t [...]
So after the tough sledding of the past few days, it’s time for us all to frolic a bit in the shallow end of the cultural pool: it is, after all, still summer, and Labor Day’s just around the corner. Here, then, a parlor game: What are your ten favorite “rock movies”? That phrase wobbles [...]
Long after any- and everyone else interested had seen it, Robyn & I got the 2003 movie My Architect: A Son’s Journey from Netflix last week and gave it a look. Based on a (for me) outstanding premise—we’re going to learn more about the architect Louis Kahn and his famous friends!—the movie proceeds to disappoint [...]