At the age of 72, most pure pop vocalists (if they’re still able to sing) are playing it safe, rehashing their tried and true work, or recording duets with friendly young stars to lift their visibility. Spirit in the Room,the new album from Tom Jones on Rounder Records in the U.S., is, however, nothing like [...]
Posted on May 1st, 2013The Old Bushmills Distillery in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, describes itself as the oldest licensed distillery in the world, and no one seems able to mount a serious challenge to that. The license to distill in that spot was granted by King James I in 1608. As with my previous considerations of Jameson and Tullamore [...]
Posted on March 17th, 2013Jameson Irish Whiskey is easily the best-selling Irish whiskey in the world. It has long been a fixture as such; if a bar stocks only one Irish whiskey, it is almost certainly going to be Jameson. I’m not the sufficient historian to know how and why this came to be so. I will only speculate [...]
Posted on March 15th, 2013St. Patrick’s Day is days away, and what better way could there be of celebrating the conversion of the Gaels to Christianity than to meditate upon some Irish whiskies. Indeed, were it not for Irish Catholic angst (speaking from some experience) the whiskey industry might never have flourished in that country at all. The very [...]
Posted on March 13th, 2013What is it about a great Ron Sexsmith song that can be so very pleasing and satisfying, right on the first hearing? I was trying to work that out while listening to one after another on his latest album, Forever Endeavor. For me at least I think it’s something like this: One has heard in [...]
Posted on March 7th, 2013A couple of chapters into Too Many Cooks by Rex Stout, a woman named Dina Laszio, the wife of famed chef Phillip Laszio, comes to Nero Wolfe to say that she is afraid someone is trying to poison her husband. She knows Wolfe doesn’t owe her anything and probably doesn’t hold her in high regard, [...]
Posted on February 27th, 2013Scheduled for release on April 23rd in the U.S. (on Rounder Records) is a new album from Tom Jones, titled Spirit in the Room. It was released on the other side of the pond last year. I confess I’ve only just become aware of it, and that was through my encountering on YouTube the video [...]
Posted on February 17th, 2013It’s just possible that I have recently stumbled upon the explanation for the age-old mystery of “spontaneous combustion.” That’s the alleged phenomenon whereby a living thing—including most notably a human being—suddenly bursts into flames for no apparent reason. I was in bed, and our small dog was lying near the bottom of the bed, atop [...]
Posted on January 25th, 2013I’d avoided this much-talked-about joint British ITV/American PBS Masterpiece Theatre television series until last night, when special circumstances conspired to compel me to view it (i.e. my better half wanted to watch it). I fully understood that the show was basically a soap opera for people who are too good to watch soap operas. And [...]
Posted on January 14th, 2013The new David Bowie song, “Where Are We Now?” (embedded via YouTube below) has been generating a frenzy of attention, given it’s his first record in ten years and many thought he’d never put out another one. (He’s 66 years-old, which somehow sounds so old for David Bowie, while, by contrast, I think 71 sounds [...]
Posted on January 11th, 2013Before this Christmas season draws to an official close (there are twelve days of Christmas, y’know), I thought it worth noting one new addition to the already-gargantuan and ever-increasing library of Christmas albums. (I love great Christmas music and am known to listen to it in July.) It is a record titled Baby, It’s Cold [...]
Posted on January 1st, 2013There’s a communal feeling about most Christmas music. Maybe this is because we generally hear the songs in the company of others, whether it’s as we’re elbowing our way down the aisles of the department store or perhaps singing along with them in church. I think that the most special thing about Frank Sinatra’s A [...]
Posted on December 13th, 2012“Revisionist Art: Thirty Works by Bob Dylan” is on show at New York City’s Gagosian Gallery. It was unveiled last Wednesday and runs, God willing, until January 12th, 2013. I was slightly surprised to hear that Dylan was having another show at the Gagosian. It was little more than a year ago that they hosted [...]
Posted on December 3rd, 2012It was Kingsley Amis who introduced me properly to gin. I would like to say that it was at some soirée hosted by that famous (late) English author, but no; it was instead in a collection of his writings on alcohol-related topics, titled Everyday Drinking, released in 2008, with an introduction by another well-known (and [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2012I’ve been listening to Bob Dylan’s new album, Tempest (the iTunes version until my LPs arrive) over the past week and I’ve also been looking at some of the reviews. My impression at the moment is of a vast gulf between what the album contains versus what even the best reviewers have been able to [...]
Posted on September 10th, 2012This is a review of (and a meditation inspired by) the Acer Aspire 5733Z-4816notebook computer. I like to tell myself that I make my computers earn their purchase price, and then some. My chief working computer for nearly the past six years has been a Dell Vostro laptop. When I bought it (if I’m not [...]
Posted on August 21st, 2012At New York’s IFC Center I recently watched the film “Defiant Requiem,” which is a new feature-length telling of a remarkable and moving story from the Holocaust. I am not going to try and provide the whole narrative here, as you can find that kind of thing elsewhere, but briefly it is the story of [...]
Posted on August 8th, 2012I’ve recently read David Evanier’s All the Things You Are: The Life of Tony Bennett, and it seems to me that it will stand as the essential written reference point for anyone interested in this great American singer’s life and music. Of-course, being about the only proper biography written of Bennett (excluding his 1998 autobio [...]
Posted on April 3rd, 2012Hank Williams’ voice is a unique and a gigantic one in American culture, which means that it is also one familiar to those who listen to popular music all across the world. Hank Williams is recognizable singing, say, “I Saw The Light,” or “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” even by people who couldn’t remotely [...]
Posted on November 12th, 2011Tony Bennett isn’t very well known for whispering. He’s a big singer—not in the sense that he over sings, but he certainly is known for the power to belt it out above muscular backing bands, and through his career he’s done plenty of that, and to good effect. And even in the plethora of latter [...]
Posted on July 19th, 2011Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. (Psalms 51:6) I remember when I first heard Ron Sexsmith; not in a JFK-getting-shot sense, but generally that it was in the first half of the 1990s and the song was Secret Heart. It seemed like a [...]
Posted on April 11th, 2011Former mayor of New York City Ed Koch must have been feelin’ pretty groovy when the 59th St. Bridge was renamed in honor of Hizzoner. Koch is a big, likeable personality and a quintessential New Yorker without any doubt. Yet, it’s a little bit funny, this renaming of a bridge for him. Were the Koch [...]
Posted on March 30th, 2011Bing Sings Whilst Bregman Swings~ Bing Crosby (Polygram Records) It’s 1956, and you’re Bing Crosby. (Would I lie to you? And isn’t life better this way?) You’ve been a recording artist for more than twenty-five years. You are one of the originators of popular singing in the age of the microphone and the gramophone record. [...]
Posted on March 10th, 2011I haven’t finished reading the book, so this is not a proper review, as such. But, based on leafing through this 815 page tome, and having now begun reading it properly from the beginning, it’s safe to say a few things about it right off the bat. It is a monumental work, quite unlike your [...]
Posted on February 9th, 2011The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women by James Ellroy. (Knopf, 224 pages) I like James Ellroy. My favorite book of his — and I think his greatest — is American Tabloid,which is a take like no other on American history from 1958 to the end of 1963. Unlike the JFK conspiracy tracts and movies [...]
Posted on November 12th, 2010It’s said to be the final song that Johnny Cash composed, titled “I Corinthians 15:55,” and the refrain goes like this: Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory? Oh life, you are a shining path And hope springs eternal just over the rise When I see my Redeemer beckoning me [...]
Posted on April 1st, 2010(Warning: Contains spoilers for those who still believe in Santa Claus) Bob Dylan’s album Christmas In the Heart struck me both strongly and delightfully upon the very first listen, and it continues to strike me that way after many further spins. However, rather than try to make a grand case here as to why others [...]
Posted on December 21st, 2009
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