Sleepless In Carmel
There’s a slight dusting of snow tonight, leaving the remaining holiday lights in the neighborhood to look particularly dazzling. It feels like the week before Christmas instead of the first week of the new year. So, hey, happy New Year to everyone. I hope you all made it through the holiday unscathed. Our girls apparently resolved to not sleep in…
Favorite Songs Of 2007
This is hard work. How do I filter all the music I listened to this year, and I listened to a ton of music, into 20 songs to represent the entire 12 months? In the end, that’s exactly how I managed it: what songs most represented the past year to me? What songs will I always immediately think of in…
Fives: One Hit Wonders
As if you needed proof I’m a bit off, one of my favorite things is to check out </span><span style=”font-family:Helvetica Neue;”><em>The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits</em></span><span style=”font-family:Helvetica Neue;”> from the library and then just flip through the pages, soaking up the trivia. I recently checked it out again and figured I would put it to some kind of use.…
Top Five Albums: OK Computer
I must admit, this is a terrifically difficult album for me to write about. First, a ton has already been written about it, and I always fear that I’m simply regurgitating things I’ve read elsewhere. Second, I find myself attempting to “solve” the album each time I listen to it. It’s a bit like The Wall, in that sense. As…
Where Did The Week Go?
I’m not sure what happened to this week. Seriously, it seems like it was just Sunday night and I had grand plans for a bunch of blog posts, a bunch of projects around the house, and so on, and here I am on Friday having accomplished little if any of that. That’s what a cold going through the house will…
Top Five Albums: It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
“You’re quite hostile.” “I got a right to be hostile, man, my people been persecuted.” I said in my initial list that this is the most influential album in my life. Before we get to that, first a quick review of how this album fit into the history of rap. When it was released in 1988, rap had already entered…
Top Five Albums: Revolver
No list of best albums is complete without a Beatles disk. I say that as someone who really didn’t like the Beatles for most of my life, finally learning about and appreciating their genius over the last five years or so. (My dislike for the Beatles was perhaps the first manifestation of my contrarian side. When I was little, my…
Top Five Albums: Achtung Baby
All great bands must have an album that changes all the rules, destroys all expectations, and challenges their fans to open their minds to something new and unexpected. Achtung Baby was exactly that for U2, marking a dramatic shift from the sound they perfected on 1987’s The Joshua Tree. While U2 could have kept cranking out the same sound, and…
Fives: Favorite Albums
Remember a while back when I mentioned a new gimmick of lists of five things I would be dropping on you? Haven’t seen list #2 yet, have you? Well, there is an explanation. This list is a biggie, and I’ve been struggling with how to properly roll it out to you. I’ve finally figured out how I want to do…
More On The Brainwashing Of My Kids
As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been working hard to get the music of the Beatles deeply ingrained in my daughters’ heads. I figure if they get a solid base of Beatles, even with whatever regrettable music they listen to in their teen years (Hey, I’m just as guilty as the next person), they’ll eventually gravitate towards good music and be better…