At the beginning of this week, I trashed my entire iTunes music library on my computer at work. It consisted of 4,077 songs, which, if played consecutively, would go on for 13 days, three minutes and 20 seconds, according to the application’s statistics. Over the last couple of years I’ve imported a number of...
Speaking Of The Rolling Stones…
A friend of a friend posted this on Facebook, and I just had to pass it along. At various times, I have tried listing my All-Time-Top-Five-Favorite-Songs (try it sometime; it’s a lot harder than you think), and I usually come up with two Rolling Stones songs—Sympathy for the Devil and Gimme Shelter—in that list,...
Lyrics In Exile
One of my favorite lines from a music review comes from way back in 1977, after Linda Ronstadt released the Simple Dreams album. About her version of the Rolling Stones’ song Tumbling Dice, the reviewer wrote something to the effect that “the lyrics meant so much more when when we couldn’t understand them.” I’ve...
One More Saturday Night: The Dead At MRF
I liked the Grateful Dead, but never anywhere near enough to earn the title “Deadhead.” Those folks followed the band all over the country, seeing multiple shows on a given tour, trading tapes back and forth, and generally living their lives for the Dead. Some would keep track of how many concerts they’d been...
No Lines For The Men’s Restroom
About halfway through Lilith Fair last night, my brother Phil and I were estimating the male-to-female ratio of the crowd. I guessed 20:80; he figured it was 10:90. He may have been closer to the right number than I was. There are advantages for the males in a ratio like that—people-watching is more fun,...
Lilith Fair
Lilith Fair, the all-women music festival founded in the late 1990s by Sarah McLachlan, returned to St. Louis last night. And just like the first two times it came to town, my brother Phil and I–both big Sarah fans–were in attendance. In 1997 and 1998 (the festival also toured in 1999, but didn’t come...
April 28, 1980: The Who At The Checkerdome
Note: This is the third of a three-part “mini-series” of posts. The first two parts are here and here, but if you’d like you can start right in with this one. The St. Louis Who concert announcement may have been the worst-kept secret in the world. By the time they actually went public, in...
Why Should I Care If I Have To Cut My Hair?
“I’ve got to move with the fashions, or be outcast…” The story of our WHO weekend in 1980 continues. Episode 1 is here. After our adventure in Columbia, Geoff and I rode the bus back to St. Louis on Monday, arriving mid-afternoon at the downtown bus station. I showed him around a bit; I...
A One-Way Drive In 1980
Preface: Maybe I have a strong internal calendar. I seem to remember a lot of key dates in my life ; I remember way more birthdays than I have a right to; and if I hear it’s the anniversary of something or other, it always seems to be more interesting to me than to...
London Calling
It was 30 years ago this spring that music–both my own and the world’s at large–got an incredible jolt. The Clash album London Calling was released in England in December of 1979, and in the U.S. in January 1980. Normally I’m not an “early adopter” of new music, but thanks to my good friend...