The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Everything You Love Is Cancelled Now

You can still purchase Elvis Costelo’s 1979 album Armed Forces, but who knows how much longer this will be possible? How long before we’re required to forget that it ever existed? Elvis Costello has said that he will no longer perform one of his biggest hits, “Oliver’s Army,” and has urged radio stations to also […]

The Savage Young

Dave Reaboi is a hater. The Southern Poverty Law Center doesn’t have a “Beatlephobia” category on their Hate Map, but if they did, Dave would be a dot on it. Like a lot of Beatle haters — and I could also name Ace of Spades in this category — Dave Reaboi is a Gen Xer, […]

8 Killed as Houston Hip Hop Show Becomes ‘Mass Casualty Incident’

If you’ve never heard of Travis Scott, he’s a rapper who is also Kylie Jenner’s baby daddy. A native of Houston, his 2018 album Astroworld, which went triple platinum, was named for a Houston amusement park that closed in 2005. The title now has deadly significance: At least eight people died and scores more were […]

R.I.P., Charlie Watts

The great rock-and-roll legends of our Baby Boomer youth are now marching like a parade toward the grave, and I ignore most of these routine obituaries, but I’ll make an exception for Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones, arguably the most dapper man in rock-and-roll. Watts was not originally a rocker, but instead was a […]

My Chicago Earworm Problem

  For the past several weeks, for some reason, I’ve become obsessed with old Chicago songs. Not their later easy-listening pop, but their early stuff from 1969-1972, when they were still avant-garde. And I couldn’t figure out why this happened until I realized that “25 or 6 to 4” had been remastered as a U.S. […]

A Musical Interlude

So I’ve spent the past day researching, which involves viewing a lot of old YouTube videos. When I’m watching YouTube videos for my own amusement (rather than research), my preferences are fireworks, “storm chasing” and rare old Beatles sessions. Somehow, the algorithm for “suggested” videos popped up this interesting performance:   This fascinates me, because […]

An Experiment That Failed

  Teach your children well, Their father’s hell did slowly go by . . . Will the people who sold us all that Sixties “peace and love” business ever admit that the road we’re traveling does not lead to Utopia? Is there nothing that can cause them to look back and say to themselves, “Y’know, […]

R.I.P., Little Richard

  “A wop bop a loo bop a wop bam boom!” Arguably the most exciting words in the history of music, the opening lyrics of “Tutti Frutti” announced the arrival of a bright-burning star who, in a period of two years, created the sound of rock-and-roll. You could say Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley had […]

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