The year’s best space station video
I usually don’t just post links to things, but since no other topic leaps to mind, this video is the best thing I’ve seen in awhile: Aboard the International Space Station, Astronaut Chris Hadfield (also a Canadian) plays and sings with the Barenaked Ladies. It made me kind of misty-eyed. Apart from the cool factor, it’s also a pretty good song. And how about that photogenic young […]
Oh, what can it mean?
I guess this post has to be about Davy Jones. I used to occasionally sneer at the Monkees, back in the day, but I still find myself singing the chorus to “Daydream Believer” whenever it comes on the radio. I know, he didn’t write it. But I don’t think I ever heard a cover as good as the original. I can still see him shaking that stupid […]
Grammies and grandpas
Tonight was the first time I’ve watched the Grammies in quite awhile. It was kind of a geriatric affair, wasn’t it? Tony Bennett and Glenn Campbell and Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney. There was Diana Ross. And get a load of Reba McEntire, a caricature of herself with some new facial surgery. Sheesh, attack of the oldsters. Next thing you know they’ll have Mick Jagger on there. […]
Paul Simon strikes another chord
Sometimes a song gets lodged in your head and loops there endlessly for the rest of the day. Today it’s “She Moves On,” the underrated masterpiece from Paul Simon’s Rhythm of the Saints album in 1990. As songs go, it’s a great one to have stuck on repeat. A lot better than, say, “Achy Breaky Heart.” Don’t ask me how it got there. Maybe the opening lyric: […]
Crappy music, reasonably priced
Does anybody use CDs anymore? For anything? I’m asking because I have about a thousand of them, most still in boxes, and the ones I’ve unpacked I can’t remember actually putting in a CD player at any time in the past four years. I’m wondering if I should even bother unpacking the rest. This saddens me. At the dawn of the CD age in the early ’80s, […]
Christian rock, Cuban style
During our stay in Havana we met a young guy named Pepe, who is the drummer for a Christian rock band. That genre is sort of rare in Cuba, not least because the Christian thing is not favored by the government and such bands are therefore denied access to state venues and state television. Pepe said that when his band plays on the street, they make sure […]