October 2009
14 posts
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ARTICLE: "New Venture A Return To Form" (Rickie...
“I think it is the kind of writing more associated with me, more folks like this kind of thing. I have a feeling right now that a very honest and loving venture into songs is what is needed. So there it is. Easy songs. I cannot explain things, I really just sing.”
My feature on Rickie Lee Jones, published in today’s Berkshire Eagle. She plays tonight at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center...
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Can I check my voicemail now? No.
In the midst of the battle over surcharges for “excessive” data use by consumers of wired high-speed Internet comes another troubling front: AT&T is looking to further gouge consumers of its wireless data services.
Did you know the “unlimited” data plan actually only covers 4GB of use, with a $490-per-gigabyte surcharge levied after that? Meaning: you should be...
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From Stephen Foster to Sugarhill Gang...but what...
Here’s a fascinating piece by Matthew Guerrieri in the Boston Globe about the history of popular song form (i.e., verse-chorus-verse), tracing it to an 1840’s minstrel act. The piece is pegged to the 30th anniversary of “Rappers’ Delight,” the seminal Sugarhill Gang proto-rap song that accidentally named the genre (the first words are “I said a’ hip,...
Did Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman meet?
Interesting post by Dave Itzkoff on The New York Times’ ArtsBeat blog today. The news here is Linn Ullmann told the Times this week her father never met Woody Allen, but the more interesting nugget is the contradictory evidence: a story her mother, Liv Ullmann, told The Guardian in 1991 describing such a meeting in detail.
Itzkoff sort of poses this as a puzzle, but couldn’t the...
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ARTICLE: "Tag Sale Whimsy At MASS MoCA"
“It wasn’t quite power pop, it wasn’t quite hard rock, and it wasn’t entirely psychedelic. But Dr. Dog’s show was hard driving, tuneful, and pleasantly strange…I might describe it as ‘Music From Big White Album.’”
Read my review of Dr. Dog’s show at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass. on 10/17/09, published in today’s Berkshire...
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But does it come with a comb?
I know most of the Dave Eggers news these days has to do with a little movie dealing with the present location of the wild things, but there’s something else of interest brewing.
If any publication has ever been out to demonstrate the artistry of form, it’s of course Eggers’ McSweeney’s Quarterly. How many people have purchased an edition because of the incredibly cool...
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Janis Ian on “the function of the...
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ARTICLE: "Dr. Dog: Invoking The Three 'B's"
“Saying a rock band is influenced by The Beatles is like saying Yo Yo Ma is influenced by the invention of the cello…”
My advance feature on Dr. Dog, performing at MASS MoCA on Saturday. Published in today’s Berkshire Eagle.
(Photo by Paolo Proserpio)
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Macbeth in the Red Room
“Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep…
Macbeth shall sleep no more.’”
——The Tragedy of Macbeth; Act 2, scene 2
This weekend I had the chance to see the terrific Sleep No More, a co-production between Cambridge’s American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) and Punchdrunk, a London-based troupe specializing in site-specific theatrical installations. Felix...
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ARTICLE: "A Night Of Liberated Pop"
“Deep into a radically successful reinvention of his biggest hit, Bruce Hornsby found something new…”
My review of Bruce Hornsby and The Noisemakers at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center on October 6, published in the 10/8/09 Berkshire Eagle.
Photo from the show by Stephen G. Donaldson Photography.
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ARTICLE: "Guthrie Family Rules" (concert review) →
Published in the 10/6/09 Berkshire Eagle.
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ARTICLE: "A Dynamo For All Seasons"
My interview with Bruce Hornsby, published in the 10/5/09 Berkshire Eagle.
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ARTICLE: "Guthries Ride Again: Arlo aims to keep... →
“The stock market crashed. A rash of bank foreclosures drove families from their homes. Congress pumped a huge sum of money into economic stimulus. It was in this environment that Woody Guthrie recorded and performed his best-known songs…”
With family in tow, Arlo Guthrie readies a long, national tour featuring the “new” Woody Guthrie songs—previously unpublished...
