Judy Garland: "Somewhere Over The Rainbow"

-
April 16, 1961 - December 6, 2014



Sincerely,
Letters From A Tapehead

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Music in the Time of Corona (or, Just Some Selected Data Dumps That I Enjoyed in 2020)

-
Image
"As awful as it sounds, an album is simply a data dump now." — Jon Caramanica, New York Times , 1/1/21 I'm a few days late delivering my favorite "data dumps" selections for 2020. I have no excuses other than pure exhaustion and an embarrassing lack of motivation. Plus, I wanted to revisit some of these albums before I committed them to a list.  On New Year's Eve, it came to light that the inimitable Daniel Dumile, a.k.a. MF DOOM, had passed away at the age of 49 two full months before anyone knew. He'd apparently died on Halloween. A mere two weeks ago, two (evidently posthumous) MF DOOM tracks produced by Flying Lotus and BADBADNOTGOOD surfaced. Doesn't really make the bad news any better, but it's something sweet for the ears at least.  Omissions & Lamentations  for 2020: I think 2020 should be an omission. It's already a lamentation. I'd like to be more active on the writing front moving forward and I'm in the process of pur
Read more

To Whom It May Interest #1: A Word Or Three About Wire

-
Image
To Whom It May Interest, I’ve been simultaneously reading two books at once for the past month or so. One is a biography about Elvis Presley and his rise to superstardom. The other is “Mainlines, Blood Feasts & Bad Taste” by Philip Seymour Hoffman…er, I mean Lester Bangs. A couple weeks ago, I was paging through Bangs’ compiled ferocity and observation and found a review of Wire’s second opus, Chairs Missing . Direct quote from the man himself: “Wire. Think about that word and what it has meant in your life, perhaps even the lives of your ancestors. Then think just how hot you’d be hoppin’ to get a chance to hear a group whose sound might live up to such euphonious appellation! Wire. The Sound of the ‘70s. Flat. Dead. Dull. Thud. Mud. Plod. Sod. But mebbe with a whiplash on the counterstrike.” Now, having myself only recently opened the door to the wonderful world of Wire’s initial trio of recorded bliss, my reaction to the review was chockfull of “you don’t know what you
Read more

The Week's Mixtape — Wadada Leo Smith/Henry Kaiser/Alex Varty, Kee Avil, EXEK, Kramer, Kreidler

-
Image
Good afternoon, Looking ahead at 2022. Here's some music I enjoyed this week.  ______________________________________________________________________ Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Kaiser, Alex Varty:  "Pacifica Koral Reef (preview)" (via 577 Records) Bandcamp — https://577records.bandcamp.com/album/pacifica-koral-reef 577 Records —  https://www.577records.com Via 577 Records: "I’m supposed to be writing about Pacifica Koral Reef , this record that I’ve made with my friend Henry Kaiser and his friend Wadada Leo Smith. And while the music it contains is, for me, a miraculous late-career achievement after 50 years of mostly playing in alternative rock bands, writing about it is a downright odd thing to have to do. In my parallel life as an arts journalist, I’ve interviewed everyone from Ornette Coleman to John Cage to Robert Plant but I’ve rarely had to write about myself, and I much prefer it that way. Fighting against my natural tendency towards self-effacement is the fact
Read more