Random Notes

(This review was originally published in the Washington Independent Review of Books on March 19, 2012.) Astronaut David Bowman, after painfully decommissioning the charming rogue supercomputer HAL as they approach Jupiter’s moon Iapetus in the 1968 film 2001 A Space Odyssey, confronts a space oddity. To those of us who saw the epic movie by […]

My musings about the mail was broadcast today on WUWM Milwaukee Public Radio’s Lake Effect program – listener discretion advised: I sort of croak out a tune or two.

Safkhet Publishing, 145 pp, Cambridge, United Kingdom Joey Ramone, on stage at the Rainbow in London on New Year’s Eve 1977, apparently recovering from a pre-gig chow-down at a local Indian restaurant, mournfully groaned into his mic, “After eating that Chicken Vindaloo, I wanna be well.”  The Ramones then blasted into their next fast and […]

Love Goes to Buildings on Fire – Five Years in New York that Changed Music Forever by Will Hermes (This review was published in the Washington Independent Review of Books, December 2011) Music journalist Will Hermes, referring to rock ‘n’ roll critics back in the day, wrote, “… their sense that the entire world of art […]

“Please mister postman, look and see, if there’s a card in your bag for me.” Marvellettes, 1961. Big hit.  Also fourth song, side two, the Beatles’ Second Album, spring of 1964—a bouncy bit of Beatlemania. A sprig of middle of the century sunshine, youthful optimism, teenagers in love. And we waited so patiently for that […]