Thursday, June 09, 2011
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
A NEW ERA
This is pretty good if not totally pessimistic.
The idea is that we have entered a new "age".
We have been in the Holocene age which followed the Pleistocene.
Ages are delineated by layers of geologic sediment.
We have now managed to cover the earth in our own man made layer. Or the beginnings of it.
The seabed is poisoned and the ground is beginning to turn into concrete and asphalt.
They are serious about this.
I suppose we should feel happy to be around for an "age shift". The last one, the Holocene, was just at the dawning of human life. Or something like it.
Of course, this one may be just at the sunset of the same life.
I am agnostic about all this. I don't know what will happen and do not believe in the end any more than I do the triumph of man (and woman) over his/her domain.
I won't be around for even the beginnings of it.
I still wonder if they are having us on about this. Probably not. It isn't a kidding matter, is it. At least not in the opinion pages of the NYTimes.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
NOT ME
I was not at Woodstock.
If all the people who say they were there were there, there wouldn't be any room for me.
I knew kids that went.
Well, kids that were ten years younger than me.
They took off, spur of the moment and didn't get back for a week.
Going wasn't bad but getting home was horrendous. And it was only from Boston to upper New York state. I don't think they heard much music.
I did go see the movie. I took my kids. The guy at the theater told me that it wasn't good for kids to see because there were "bad words" in it.
We all went in and saw it anyway.
There wasn't anything about Woodstock that I could see, from the movie, that would make me want to be there. I do not even regret not wishing I was there, let alone lie about it.
Dirt, no food, traffic jams, doped out people.
Not my kind of thing.
I am one of the few people I know who has never been to any kind of rock or other big venue concert.
I have gone to see a few performers in a smaller setting.
So that is it. No nostalgia here. I missed it and I am not sorry about that at all.
Take one look. Would you regret missing this?
Monday, November 17, 2008
THE BOYS IN THE HALL
I know I have written about this before. Blogging is the essence of repetition.
I am a severe Hall and Oates fan.
I have a lot of the discs. I don't play them very often. It is more that I have them, if you get my meaning.
I stay in touch with the oeuvre by watching Darryl Hall on his website:
which is a wonderful compendium of small concerts by Hall and his road group, now 13 in total. A year's worth of great music.
Of course, I am only getting half an ouevre here as Oates is not present except for the first one but the group does HO standards as well as new works by Hall and there are guest stars who are in the same mood as the HO history.
Yesterday, the 13th session had a great guest star. Wow! Oates. And they missed no opportunity to show the guys interacting. Fan stuff. Stories.
And they played almost all non HO material. They did a really great version of the OJ's hit "Back Stabbers" with a few OJ anecdotes.
The highlight, though, is the duo's cover of the Memphis doo-wop obscurity, "I Want Someone," by The Mad Lads.
"It's the song that first brought John and I together as teenagers to form a group," says Daryl. "We shared a love for the tune, which, in my mind, is true American folk music."
"It was a favorite of Daryl and mine," adds John. "We saw The Mad Lads perform the song at the Uptown Theater in Philadelphia. I remember it because they wore yellow suits with white gloves. When Daryl and I met, and began to learn a little bit about each other, we discovered we both loved it. We've never played it live before. This will be a first."
It is all quite wonderful. I had seen the first 6 sessions but skipped ahead for this one.
You don't have to be a Hall and Oates or Daryl Hall fan to enjoy these tapes. They are musically very satisfying and the expertise is supreme.
They have charts but they riff off them. You can see the interplay.
And the video is very dense. I watch it on full screen which is not very satisfying with most videos off the net.
Sound up.
Try it you will like it.
No. They are not gay but they could be they are that close to one another. Like married folks.
Watch the interplay when they are working.
They still work together. There is a new live album from the LA Troubadour, 35 years after their first and only appearance there.
How many duos are still together after all these years, still writing and performing new stuff. They each have their own separate careers too. Maybe that is the secret.
Labels: rock
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
"WHEN I DIE, SPREAD MY ASHES OVER THE 80'S"
Which calls for a David Lee Roth video. The music doesn't really start until about 2.5 minutes into it.
Just part of our cultural enrichment program.
