A quick follow-up on my December 13 posting about John Lennon & Yoko Ono: I’d suggested, there, that Yoko was the second great artistic collaborator of John’s life, after Paul McCartney. Not that controversial an assertion, I suppose, but I was pleased to see this confirmation in the newest (Dec. 23) issue of Rolling Stone, [...]
I closed last time by writing, “When we remember John’s death, that’s the first thing I’d like for us to think of: that rock has had its geniuses, even if it maintains a wary relationship to them.” The other thing is that genius loves company. John & Paul morphed into John & Yoko quite publicly, [...]
When I think of the murder of John Lennon—murder, assassination?—the picture in my mind’s eye is of his iconic eyeglasses, lying at some distance from his body, on the sidewalk outside the Dakota. I’ve never seen such a picture; to the best of my knowledge, it doesn’t exist, unless inside some sealed NYPD or FBI [...]
The Beatles broke up when I was in sixth grade; I remember a kid named Hugh—can’t remember his last name now, forty years on—came to school one day, crying, with the news. I remember, too, that it meant next to nothing to me: an oldest child can languish behind the curve when it comes to [...]
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 [...]
Most of y’all probably don’t remember Gary Numan, and/or his first band, Tubeway Army; I’d be interested to know what reputation, if any, he has today among the under-30 crowd. He was on the fringes of the punk/new wave explosion that I’ve written about the past couple of days; he didn’t fit neatly into either, [...]
[Today's post comes to us courtesy of my old college roomate Steve Long, President of Aspen Ridge Capital Management. We met almost immediately as freshmen at UC Davis and enjoyed/endured one another's music over the duration of our undergraduate years.] I’ve theorized with Kevin that a blog posting (of his) that’s too deeply and carefully [...]
[Gentle Readers, 1 more week of classes! Mountains of papers to grade! You'll forgive me, please, if I fall back on a piece of older writing for this week's Mystery Science Auditorium---a piece that will take us through the weekend, in fact, on the film version of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity. I hope you'll enjoy [...]