The Patriots are my non-daughter-based obsession lately, and although they’re only really relevant for three hours a week there are so many blogs to read and so much media to listen to and watch that it’s almost a full-time job. Add in how long it takes to drink a giant beer and write another “our […]
We put up the Christmas tree on December 22. Weekends came and went and weeknights were dark, cold and white-washed enough that it was too much bother. I enjoy the holidays but could muster neither the enthusiasm to carry an unwieldy box (fake tree alert!) up the basement stairs nor the patience to arrange the […]
July 31, 2004. Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra is traded (indirectly) for shortstop Orlando Cabrera and first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz. It was the strangest thing—a large group of us had collected at our friend Hector’s (false name) suburban backyard to celebrate his thirtieth birthday party. The news rolled out fast, someone probably shouting from the […]
“Be careful, this might make you believe in God.” – Me, after giving a CDR (!) of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and Ascension to a friend for his birthday Coltrane released Ascension in 1966. I first heard it in the late nineties and finally bought it in 2003 or 2004. It continues to challenge […]
The game: Patriots at Bills The beer: Shipyard Blue Fin Stout The result: Win, 34–3 The commentary: Once again I rocked a Starbucks iced chai as a warm-up, obtained during a pre-storm errand scramble. And then the Blue Fin Stout. Mmm… as tasty and comfortable as December football against a Thurman Thomas-less Bills team. This […]
Two nights ago I started writing a few paragraphs to append to what became yesterday’s playlist post. Eventually I realized it wouldn’t work unless it was shoehorned in as an extended parenthetical aside, something I had already done with a never-quite-satisfying Jefferson Airplane rant that has since been severely cut down. So this gets its […]
Steve Albini was right. Years ago, Big Black’s Atomizer LP (minus the weak “Strange Things”) was issued on CD with the Heartbeat 45 and the Headache EP. This compilation was called The Rich Man’s Eight Track Tape, as opposed to The Hobo’s Diarrhea Smear, which is a collection of early Clash recordings. Included was a […]
You know when you keep reading about some album or other, and people are pissing all over themselves to douse the lava-flames of awesomeness that emanate from said album, except they like being engulfed by the overhyped lava so much that they don’t panic when they run out of pee? They just drink more water? […]
Updated: January 9, 2025 In honor of my cat Chloe face-planting on the loveseat and for the purpose of writing about music (about anything, really, following a six-month exile), here are my favorite albums of each year since 19601, as good a year as any to mark the beginning of the modern music age. For […]
[This is not my first-ever post—“So I’m a blogger” on, yes, Blogger (Biff! Bang! Pow! “Vol. 1”) blazed that derivative trail in August 2005. However, as the timeline suggests, I didn’t care for much of what I wrote in my first four years and sought a do-over. Four thousand words of anticipated “retrospective self/music criticism” […]
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