George Harrison was disappointed when he visited San Francisco at the tail end of the Summer of Love. “I went to Haight-Ashbury expecting it to be this brilliant place,” he said in a retrospective interview, “I thought it was gonna be all these groovy… people with little shops making works of art and paintings and …
Novalis once wisely wrote, “Philosophy is really homesickness: the urge to be at home everywhere.” This same truth is found much more deeply in music and poetry. 2020 – 2021 will be remembered as the homesickness years. We were separated from loved ones and quarantined inside our homes and, during this trauma, some of us …
Happy Birthday, Gene Clark. Back at the turn of the 20th century (the so-called “American Century”), there was talk of the end of the American frontier, the wild blue yonder that set America apart and impelled everyone to seek their home there. Ever since that moment, there has been a search for the artistic experience …
Walkin’ in the park just the other day, baby What do you what do you think I saw? Crowds of people sittin’ on the grass with flowers in their hair said Hey Boy do you want to score? Back in those days, we all gathered at the Red House in Butcher Park. Five, ten, sometimes as many as …
Meg Baird’s most recent solo album Don’t Weigh Down The Light was released in 2015. She also plays drums, sings, and writes lyrics for the band Heron Oblivion who released their debut in 2016. Meg collaborated with harpist Mary Lattimore on Ghost Forests released in 2018. Meg Baird’s music has been acclaimed as “celestial” (NPR), …
Listening to trumpet player and multi-instrumentalist Jaimie Branch’s newest release, Fly or Die II: Bird Dogs of Paradise is like making an investment in the visionaries, believers and dreamers of tomorrow. It’s the discovery of music this inspiring and important which makes all this music collecting a worthwhile endeavour. Fly or Die II functions …
As a Hawkwind fan, I’ll admit that I neglected to give their debut my full attention for awhile, simply because the period between 1972 up through Warrior on the Edge of Time is so monolithic. But I shouldn’t have waited so long, because although it’s very different in tone and style, it is an interesting …
The story behind Bob Dylan’s masterpiece, Blonde On Blonde, is one of the most iconic in all of popular music. Dylan, coming off of touring for the equally magnificent Highway 61 Revisited, took some of the Hawks, his touring crew, and went into the Columbia Studio in New York to create his next musical work. After frustrations …
I’m Your Man’s cover shows Leonard Cohen, 53 years old, decked out in shades and a suit, eating a banana. Well, it’s more complicated than that. It shows a man who had been at the precipice of collapse, plagued by depression so debilitating he couldn’t even get out of bed. It shows a man who …
Townes Van Zandt has been nicknamed the “Texas troubadour” and this is an apt description of the tragic singer-songwriter. Similar to John Keats and Dylan Thomas, Townes Van Zandt experienced a creative explosion between the ages of 24 – 25. His lyrics are inspired by the extremes in the landscapes of his home state of …
