Obvious thoughts RE: “Year of Van Morrison” contrivance: 1. In high school everyone seemed to think that Morrison’s last name was “Van Morrison,” just like an older relative of Van Halen. 2. Mr. Morrison is very short, but this physical limitation did not prevent him from taking an adult-sized helping from the Communal Cocaine Pile …
Portland, OR January 2, 2011 – Ending months of negotiation and unbridled industry speculation, EastPortlandBlog.com announced today its decision to declare 2011 to be the “Year of Van Morrison” in East Portland, on the internet, and across the world. “We are delighted that our year-long celebration of Van Morrison, the man, his music and his …
I realize that When the Clock Strikes (1961) is at best a campy post-noir tribute but I really like it and come back to it every now and then. It’s an oddly compelling little timepiece (groan). The female lead, Merry Anders, was born in Chicago in 1934 of Swedish, German and Irish extraction. She had …
Oh, what a little fantasy it is to imagine that all one’s thoughts were or even could be one’s own. Credit (and blame) would be uniquely ours, whether the witty bon mot or the crude faux pas. But what we add to most conversations is almost never a wholly new product, rather some collection of …
And we’re down to the last week of the regular season… [Ed. Note – Did you ever wonder what “Auld Lang Syne” means? Peggy Noonan tells you, here. Update 1/2/11 after late games – Ron is 11-7-2 this week.] No – San Diego 3 1/2 DENVER The Chargers appear to be done for the year. …
This is a “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” moment for pop music, if that makes sense to anyone. The performances are dignified, reverential, lovely really, but it’s the deftly chosen response shots from celebrities, each of whom lit up their own artistic or cultural supermoment in the years since the songs were released which project …
This is beautiful. I couldn’t agree with John Roderick more. And there are two unspoken, ignored elephant in the room, reasons that year-end, best albums top ten lists are passe: 1. Downloads are eclipsing hard copy sales and the popular perception of the album as an indivisible artistic unit is therefore evaporating. Why djinn up …
The Parallel Convergence Zone Mike and Jeff work together and have discovered a mutual fascination with old television series, B-movies, bizarre personal experiences, brushes with fame and peculiar characters they’ve met along the way. Here, they have undertaken to provide the following tandem media review for your reading pleasure: BLACK SWAN By Jeff Williams The …
In the greater Portland area there are 160 music venues, give or take a few, that will feature live music on any given night, many featuring music everyday of the week. It really is a music lover’s paradise. Reggae, punk, indie, alt, rock, you name it, Portland has got it. Having lived in or around …
Not sure weather it’s Ethel’s handlebar or Fred’s rug, but this classic I Love Lucy “Barbershop” scene pretty much takes my brain and gives it the Heimlich maneuver of archived gut laughs from beyond. Lucy’s eyeballs, specifically when they take that hot towel off of her face, make the entire thing for me. Which says …
For me, it happened a couple of months ago. I was at a birthday for one of my daughter’s little playmates and the mother was lamenting a poor turnout. “I facebooked everyone just yesterday, and they had other things going on already,” she said. The very next day someone else mentioned facebooking about something. Talk …
. “The Trick is to Keep Breathing” is magical. The perfect combination of trip hop and alternative rock. Shirley Manson’s voice is wispy and vulnerable, complementing the song’s simple message, “the trick is to keep breathing”. Released in 1999, it’s production was ahead of it’s time. Not to mention the ambient feel is quite thought-inducing …
One of the many missions of this blog (five year missions) is to bring Philippine pop culture to East Portland. Thus, I present the Jollibee bee dancing his little stinger off. Never has a mascot, or a bee, danced so gleeful-ly. Jollibee is the Philippines’ No. 1 fast food chain and has recently opened restaurants …
I’ve reallly come to love this Gospel-tinged hip hop:
Flying through the night on a fourteen-hour Japan Airlines Chicago-to-Narita flight had me thinking back on my long, soon-ending career as a Covenant Police officer. Twenty years and now I’ll get my military pension. Time had flown by. I served ten years in Washington protecting Covenant officers while they were looking for government funding …
While browsing Boing Boing (boingboing.net) last week, I ran into this blog entry: “The Dream of the 90s is Alive in Portland” — a hymn to one of America’s greatest towns — “where zines, slacking, good coffee, social consciousness, public transit and all the other sweet fantasies of the 90s are still alive.” It features …
Of all the great choral works of Christmas, the many compositions of “O Magnum Mysterium” including those by Poulenc and Victoria stand apart in their power and beauty. But Morten Lauridsen’s more recent composition of “O Magnum Mysterium” has an inner emotional strength and beauty that I’ve seldom experienced in sacred music. This is a …
Over the decades and centuries of Western culture no other holiday music has proliferated or endured like Christmas music. From old English carols to the present favourites, Christmas music can make up a considerable portion of your average collection, which is such the case with my own. When we’re all tired of hearing the same …
The politics of that last few years have had their particular rancor and tone not because of Pres Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid, but because of a political party gone off the rails, leaving the Democratic party to be its own loyal opposition since the Republicans have ceded the field. Leaving me with …
“Ground is too hard… if he wanted a proper burial, he should have gotten himself killed in the summer.” How many times in the past few years have I seen a film, and by the time I got home wanted to see it again? Not many… but I’m going to catch an encore of True …
I love the different interactions between animals and babies. Our cats run and hide when a visiting baby cries; I think they think it’s a wounded animal. When my sister was little she had a tomcat – the biggest damn cat I’d ever seen, looked like a lion. I wouldn’t want to have pissed the …
Neko Case has created a lot of compelling music in the last decade, both as an alt-country chanteuse and as a New Pornographer. However, my sentimental favorite is 2000’s Furnace Room Lullaby, the album that propelled her out of the Pacific Northwest and into international stardom. Furnace Room Lullaby firmly established a sort of trademarked …
[Ed. Note: Christmas time is here, as the Peanuts gang would sing, and Ron has his good-cheer spreading work cut out for him. So here it is. Update Late Wednesday Evening – Ron went 7-9 this week. It’s gonna take a miracle to break even.] Thursday: No – PITTSBURGH 14 Carolina The Steelers are beat …
So much gets presented as a challenge to President Obama, but his leadership style really asks more of his base and the American people: patience, a sense of history, an understanding of the modest limits of politics and our governing institutions. Obama seems to have these—do we? – Lawrence Spaulding Now, doesn’t that feel better? …
In the very best and driest sarcastic sendups, you don’t see the seam where acceptable everyday life ends and comic overstatement begins. This vid is exactly that sort of commentary– clever, profoundish and a wee-bit sadness inducing. (Thanks to Stephen Rabow for this.)
Meet SirAllAboutMusic. He works at Subway and lives with Mom. He’s been doing these vids for years. It’s not The Onion. It’s not SNL.
As with every album since Monster, it’s as bland as an accountant’s tie collection, but it still has Michael Stipe’s voice on it, and that’s a good thing. Isn’t it?
Kayne West’s sampling of King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man on his most recent album not withstanding, it’s generally not too hip nowadays to pay homage to the icons of early 70’s progressive rock. This brief clip is of one of my adolescent musical heroes, Keith Emerson, working out some piano parts from Emerson Lake …
It’s the holidays, and that means it’s time for Pink Martini. Randy Rendfeld sent me several excellent links to Pink Martini material, past and present: The Pinksters performed on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno Monday, 12/20/2010. Just two days earlier (12/18/2010), Thomas (Lauderdale), China (Forbes) and the gang brought their rollicking genre-bending orchestra to …