I am going to tell you what makes this song so great. I am not going to go into Greil Marcus territory and lay out some whole context — real or imagined. We all know everything about the sixties by now. Its arc is perhaps the most-documented six-year era ever. It goes something like this: …
A few people asked me which club the 1987 Johnny Ray show mentioned in the last post took place. My wife reminded me, Cozy Morley’s Club Avalon, long defunct. Read about it and Cozy, one of those Broadway Danny Rose-like old time comedians, here in an old Times article. Club Avalon was a barn. He …
In the summer of 1987, when I was 21, I got to see Johnnie Ray at a tiny little dump in Wildwood New Jersey. He was close enough to us that his sweat rained down on us. And sweat he did. The cat really brought it, much to the delight of all the sun-burned, snowy-haired …
Excellent piece on nostalgia for an old bar, here in today’s Times.
The author of the seminal Our Band Could Be Your Life, and the recent bio of Bob Mould weighed in a few years ago on this holiday classic. few people write this well about music.
It’s true! The Christmas Coyote is real! He came to our backyard this morning! It’s a Christmas Miracle! First I will write a song about him, then a children’s book, and then Stephen Spielberg will make a movie based on the book. I will be rich
…right off your shoes. Happy holidays, ladies, gentleman.
There’s a new Jimmy Cliff record coming out, the first in seven years. This is good news. But the cover of the Clash’s song “Guns of Brixton” is sort of a letdown. This remains the best cover of the classic:
I enjoyed this, from the Times, regarding sheds men use for getaways. Man Sheds.