Month: December 2015

Do We Really Worship the Same God? By Mark Erickson

Wheaton College is a nondenominational evangelical Christian institution located in the Western suburbs of Chicago that maintains a special relationship with the Reverend Billy Graham (currently 97 years old). Wheaton operates the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism, The Billy Graham Museum and Archives, and the Billy Graham Scholarship Program. According to a website called First …

Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets Bring Their Quality Holiday Review For A Fun-Filled Night At Seattle’s Neptune, by Holly Homan

On Friday night December 18th I sacrificed seeing the new Star Wars on opening night to instead see Nick Lowe at Seattle’s Neptune Theater. The sacrifice was well worth it. Now white haired and bespectacled, Nick Lowe got on stage as a solo act for about the first two or three songs. Then the real …

First Loved, Then Shunned: The Zombies and Others Belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, by Rich Horton

After Sgt. Pepper, many of us Baby Boomers became so, uhhh, “sophisticated,” that we began sneering at many of the early British Invasion bands who served as our first introductions to rock ‘n’ roll. So many superb bands, including The Hollies and The Zombies and The Searchers, got shuffed off by us in our unwashed …

Sinatra 100, by Tom Fredrickson

A couple of Spotify samplers for Sinatra anniversary week. The first recreates (almost) the singer’s last recording project, now out of print: Everything Happens to Me, a self-selected anthology of the songs that meant the most to him. No ring-a-ding-dings here; just the deepest ballads and most penetrating readings from his later years. In the …

Frank’s 100th Birthday – Let the Celebration Begin! by Chuck Strom

In September 1998, shortly after Frank Sinatra’s passing, the jazz critic Francis Davis described Sinatra’s career in The Atlantic as a two-decade procession of taking songs off the market, meaning that once Frank had recorded them, his interpretations were immediately accepted as definitive and thereby discouraged other singers from recording them afterward. I thought of …