Last Friday, I was in Lynchburg, Virginia. What brought me from the snowy wastes of Pennsylvania — we’d had a snowstorm on Wednesday that dumped fifteen-ish inches and closed the office — and took me to south-central Virginia? I went to see Carbon Leaf on their 25th-anniversary tour. I’d seen them six days earlier at … Continue reading Carbon Leaf, Live in Lynchburg
Category: Music
Shamrock Fest is on Saturday in Washington, DC, on the grounds of RFK Stadium. I bought my ticket back in November, and today I saw the schedule. I already knew the line-up was a little on the thin side, with Shaggy and Sum 41 as the headliners. Looking at the schedule, I looks like I’m … Continue reading The Shamrock Fest Schedule
Sunday marked George Harrison’s 75th birthday, and in honor of his birthday I watched The Concert for George and, later in the day, Eric Idle’s The Rutles: All You Need As Cash, a satirical film based on the Beatles’ career that features Harrison in a small role as a journalist. I also shared the wonderfully … Continue reading I Have Always Thought in the Back of My Mind…
So, the headlining acts at ShamrockFest this year are Sum 41, Shaggy, and Less Than Jake. Umm, what’s the point of this festival, again? I’ll still go; Carbon Leaf, Barleyjuice, Kilmaine Saints, and Scythian will satisfy the Celtic rock itch. But jeez. Those headliners, on St. Patrick’s Day…
I love “O Holy Night.” I write that unironically. I’m not a Christian. Heck, I’m even skeptical of the historicity of Jesus, and even if he were historical I doubt there’s any truth to the Nativity story as related in Christian mythology. Yet, in the pantheon of Christmas songs, “O Holy Night,” a song explicitly … Continue reading A Christmas Song I Love
It’s hard to say that “Walls (Circus)” is a Tom Petty deep cut — it’s the lead song on an album, it’s in a movie — but it feels like a deep cut. No one seems to know it. You never hear it on the radio. I won’t say it’s my favorite Tom Petty song, … Continue reading Some Things Go On
Earlier in the year WITF, during one of their pledge drives, showed Roy Orbison: A Black & White Night, a concert film shot, obviously, in black and white, that was filmed in September 1987. Orbison’s backing band that night consisted of Elvis’ backing band, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and Bruce Springsteen, while his backing singers … Continue reading A Night with Roy Orbison
I’m underwhelmed by Coldplay’s new Kaleidoscope EP. A companion, I suppose, to A Head Full of Dreams, Kaleidoscope comprises five songs that feel like odds and ends the band had around, rather than a proper album. The opening track, “All I Can Think About Is You,” is pretty good, though it seems to have been … Continue reading Coldplay: Kaleidoscope
How different would 20th-century culture have been if the Rutles had not discovered tea? From the perspective of fifty years beyond Dirk McQuickly's interview in which he extolled the virtues of tea, it's almost impossible to grasp just how controversial his remarks were. Today, tea is mundane, commonplace. I myself have had several cups of … Continue reading A Legend to Last a Teatime
Elbow’s video for their single “Magnificent (She Says)” makes me think of Gandalf’s final line in The Lord of the Rings: “I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are evil.” (Page 1007 in my single-volume hardcover edition.) The song itself is gorgeous, and I have listened to it many times since … Continue reading Magnificent
I could count the number of times I’ve heard Elbow on the radio in the car on one hand. I’m talking actual music tracks, not interviews on NPR or somesuch. Imagine my surprise, then, when I heard “Fugitive Motel” on the radio when I was leaving the grocery store this evening. I was skipping through … Continue reading Fugitive Motel
Sunday afternoon I listened to the Philadelphia Orchestra on Temple University’s WRTI. (They have a repeater here in York, and overnight it’s a jazz radio station instead of classical.) I sat in my living room, my Christmas tree plugged in, a cup of tea in hand, and listened to a number of Tchaikovsky pieces, concluding … Continue reading Classical Music and the Personal Need for Culture