What a cruel hoax: the middle class suburban lifestyle, a proud achievement of postwar America and the envy of peoples throughout the world (in no small part due to Mad Men glamorization), contains the very seeds of our demise. If demise is where this is heading.
Books
Book Review: “The Quiet Before”– How Our Conversations Set the Boundaries of Our Thinking
This superb book about adventures in radical thinking is less about tracking incendiary ideas to their obscure sources than about the various media used to ferment and transmit them.
Poetry Commentary: Native American Poet and Activist Joy Harjo at Tanglewood — A Disappointment
Many have surrendered to Joy Harjo’s undeniable shamanistic charms and classify her as a national treasure.
Book Review: “Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld” — A Tale of Mobsters and Musicians
Guitarist Eddie Condon quotes a mobster on jazz: “…it’s got guts and it don’t make you slobber.”
Book Review: “The Stone Age: Sixty Years of the Rolling Stones” — A Tabloid Take
The Stone Age is only about the gossip, to the point where even when something (potentially) true comes along, it still reads like trash.
Listening During Covid, Part 13 — Music of Brazil and Other Latin American Countries, Religious Consolation from Post-WW II England, and an Operatic Novel
New recordings serve up fine performances of music from Latin America, Brazil, and post-1918 England. And a novel sends its main character back two centuries into Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.
Book Review: “The Crossroads of Civilization” — Vienna as Bridge Builder Between East and West
Angus Robertson has written a thoroughly enjoyable history of Vienna that is both accurate and entertaining.
Book Review: “Making Tracks: A Record Producer’s Southern Roots Music Journey”
A music aficionado-turned-record producer shares his indelible memories of life on the road and in the studio, working with such artists Sleepy LaBeef, Irma Thomas, James Booker, Solomon Burke, Buckwheat Zydeco, and Ruth Brown.
Book Review: A Well-Written Biography of Stewart Brand — The Man Who Popularized Planetary Consciousness
Stewart Brand’s greatest achievement, by far, was the simple act of putting the photograph of the earth as seen from space on the Whole Earth Catalog’s cover.
Book Review: “Mercy” — Supporting Grace
The novel’s plot revolves around the many secrets simmering beneath the surface of the lives of the characters, and Bill Littlefield slowly teases them out to connect the disparate voices.