It’s funny how quickly pop songs start to sound “old.” In order to figure out what I was listening to this time last summer, I’ll admit that I had to consult iTunes and a couple of music blogs to see what the top tracks were for June 2015. In almost every case, my first thought…
Read MoreOk, at this point– I’m writing this on June 37– I’m already six days behind on the 30 Day Song Challenge. I was just about to give up and call it quits, but then I remembered that I’ve been doing this for a long time and, even if this year’s iteration ends up being the…
Read MoreI won’t ever get married– partly because I object to the state institution of marriage, but also because I’m old and ornery and too attached to my own independence now– so today’s prompt is a bit of a strange one to answer. For the record, I love weddings, I love couples who pledge their lives…
Read MoreMost of the kinds of music I like– blues, gospel, country, rock n’ roll– are better heard live. I don’t know if this is true of all genres of music. I’ve heard my jazz-loving and classical-loving friends speak of some of their favorite albums as if the recording were absolutely perfect, as if no “live”…
Read MoreNOTE: I’ve gotten behind in my posts for the 30 Day Song Challenge, so the next few days are going to be short and sweet, so I can get caught back up. If I choose to listen to music when I’m angry, more often than not I’m looking for some kind of cathartic release, rather…
Read MoreFor the most part, bar band songs become “bar band songs” in the first place because they’re the sort that people can hear over and over again without tiring of them. So I don’t really have a beef with most bar band songs. I wish that Beale Street bands didn’t play “Sweet Home Alabama” so frequently,…
Read MoreI’d give roughly 10 to 1 odds that you don’t know who that guy is in the picture to the left. That’s Rupert Holmes (born David Goldstein), British composer, singer-songwriter, musician, playwright, and novelist. He won two Tony Awards for his musical Drood and has released no fewer than 16 albums over the course of…
Read MoreA little more than a year ago, Memphis got a second classic hip-hop radio station when Cumulus switched the format of WKIM from talk radio to “100% Throwback.” For the first week or so that WKIM (“The Vibe”) was on air, I listened to it nonstop and, since then, it remains one of the pre-set…
Read MoreThe vault of go-to stories that, in one way or another, capture something of what we understand to be the American experience is both deep and diverse. There are the Horatio Alger-esque “bootstraps” stories. There are “The New Colossus” stories of immigrants, huddled masses yearning to breathe free. There are the “underdog” stories of athletes and artists,…
Read MoreIt seems like bad juju to pick the theme song to your life before you’ve finished living it, but oh well. [*throws salt over shoulder*] I miss the days when television gave us real theme songs, by which I mean songs with words, not the sonic mood-setters typical of so many popular programs now. (Listen:…
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