Just saw that Garry Shandling passed away suddenly. I liked him. He made meta funny and accessible at once. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/24/471773637/actor-and-comedian-garry-shandling-dies-at-66 His appearance on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee wasn’t that long ago: http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/garry-shandling-its-great-that-garry-shandling-is-still-alive Note the title of the segment. Replayed the episode. A lot of discussion of death, almost eerily so. At one point Shandling …
Month: March 2016
President Barack Obama has spent the last few days in Cuba as part of his effort to normalize relations with the island that has endured a 50 year embargo. The Chicago Tribune reported that Obama advocated for “human rights, including freedom of speech and assembly and religion” during the trip to which President Raul Castro …
Muddy Waters was interviewed countless times in his long career, often by people who had little knowledge of his life or his music. Pete Welding was a different case. He owned Testament Records, a Chicago Blues label that recorded many of Muddy’s contemporaries and friends. In this brief but illuminating interview, Welding knows the likely …
At once lush, scatalogical, heartfelt, cosmological, lyrically-piercing and honest, Melody Pool’s new single “Love, She Loves Me” is not easily forgotten. This tune forms part of her eagerly anticipated second album, Deep Dark Savage Heart which will be out 29 April 2016.
Norm Ornstein’s one of my favorite political writers, even though the think tank he belongs to, the American Enterprise Institute, leans right. His most recent piece in the Atlantic addresses the images of 1968 that are in a lot of people’s minds nowadays (bold type mine). http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/the-grim-reality-of-american-politics/474198/ I found this passage particularly interesting: “Some prominent …
Melbourne MC REMI and musical collaborator Sensible J share their first single “For Good” featuring Sampa The Great, from their upcoming album Divas and Demons, due for release later this year. After the success of 2014’s Raw x Infinity, REMI returns with a Dilla inspired, soulful track that features Sampa’s raw and powerful poetry while …
I’ve enjoyed David Axelrod’s podcasts of late. His most recent interview with Mark Leibovich of the New York Times is pretty insightful. Axe seems to be pretty good at getting his subjects to relax and open up, and he asks good questions. One of the more interesting exchanges was about Hillary Clinton’s limitations as a …
Lake Jons is one of Finland’s most hyped bands, rolling in like a thick mist on a sweet northern wind. Although Lake Jons comes from a garage on the outskirts of Helsinki, their sound is birthed in the woods and melodies of the Nordic landscape. They combine the harshness of a folk-ish disposition with the …
Swedish sensation Nadia Nair is back with another single from her debut album, Beautiful Poetry, which will be released on April 29th. The new song is called “Dear Brother” and features 90s-inspired production, upbeat bass and mantra-like harmonies. “Dear Brother” follows the more minimalistic first single, “Something Something Something,” which gained support from the likes …
I just watched Mavis! on HBO – this documentary is so good, it even caused me to have warm feelings towards Jeff Tweedy! There’s great vintage clips and commentary from Chuck D & Dylan, plus a warm moment with Levon Helm not long before he passed. – Pat Thomas is the author of Listen, Whitey! …
Drinking a cold beer and listening to Van Morrison’s near masterpiece Veedon Fleece. I always wanted to track down this album, now I am tripping through Van’s own Irish myth and stream of conscious ramblings toward rich green patches of brilliance. He’s just a giant mushroom. He doesn’t make much sense, but you are free …
No music fan with a pulse can resist a tune called, “Chimbombo,” and you can’t either…
Embattled singer/songwriter Vince Grant is championing honesty about mental illness by releasing the latest video for “Oceans II” (above) from his critically acclaimed debut CD My Depression Is Always Trying To Kill Me (below). This release has ignited public discussion about depression. The Los Angeles-based Grant is the rare musician who has openly addressed his …
I was having a beer with a friend of mine when I got the news of Keith Emerson’s death. There seems to have been a recent wave of rock and roll icons exiting stage left – and given all of our advancing ages – more soon to come. But hearing about the untimely demise of …
What does a record producer do? What does he bring to the studio? In the case of Phil Spector, it was usually a revolver, a cloud of dread, and a closet full of percussion instruments. Nick Lowe seems to have brought bonhomie and the shortest path through the session to the pub afterwards. To read …
Don’t know if this makes any sense if you haven’t seen John Oliver’s (above) epic takedown of Trump (my wife was nonplussed), but the image below is my first effort at agitprop. This is the perfect time to point out that Trump was accused, today, of leading his followers in a pledge which looked suspiciously …
Not Just a Cycle Scott Christiansen, Author of the book Planet in Distress, explains how natural disasters fit into the Great Controversy and Bible prophecy. Online Books: The Great Controversy Here’s the video above on a page with larger viewing screen.
London-based EDM artist INDIAN PRINCESS has come out with a blistering satire of the vacuous aspirations to globalism in her genre which you may see and hear here: