[contextly_auto_sidebar] MUCH of the world was taken by surprise by the death of playwright and actor Sam Shepard, who was felled (like Charles Mingus, a jazz artist who he was in some ways simpatico) ALS. To me, it was a bit like the sudden departure of Bowie and Prince. But I must admit that while I knew vaguely that the actor I loved from The Right Stuff was a playwright, I did not know … [Read more...]
Jonathan Lethem and Rock Criticism
[contextly_auto_sidebar] SINCE I was a teenager, I've been fascinated by the lions of music journalism and rock criticism -- Greil Marcus, Robert Christgau, Ellen Willis, and others, especially from the field's 1970s heyday. The novelist Jonathan Lethem and his Pomona College colleague (and resident Dylanologist) Kevin Dettmar have collected 50 years of the stuff -- "From Elvis to Jay Z" -- … [Read more...]
The Mess We’re In: Politics, Economy and Journalism
[contextly_auto_sidebar] OVER the last few weeks, I've been asked on several occasions if I can explain what the hell happened to this country. (I've been in London and Ireland for some of that time.) The simple answer is that I am as shocked as anyone by the turn in the US (and to some extent by the related idiocy of Brexit.) But I do have some hunches. So while I try to keep this blog … [Read more...]
“Money is a kind of poetry”: Lee Siegel’s The Draw
[contextly_auto_sidebar] ONE of the finest memoirs I've read in many moons comes from veteran literary and culture critic Lee Siegel. His book The Draw tells the tale of an intellectually serious young man in a family w/ a messy, complicated relationship to money and class, which set repeated roadblocks before him. It's lyrical, succinct, at times painful. Here is my Q+A with Siegel, who is … [Read more...]
French Band Air at the Greek Theatre
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR reasons I can’t entirely figure out or explain, continental Europeans have not had much luck with rock music, not matter how you define the term. (And no, the Scorpions are not excepted.) Why the average blues band from Birmingham or Belfast can typically do better than the finest combo in Rome or Frankfurt is a mystery I may never understand. The Swedes started to … [Read more...]
Walter Hopps and “The Dream Colony”
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR Angelenos in the visual arts world, Walter Hopps (1932-2005) was an almost godlike figure -- an eccentric, disorganized, perpetually tardy pill-popping genius who both discovered young artists and found ways to frame established figures that made them seem new. Hopps -- best known in these parts as a founder of the legendary Ferus Gallery in the late '50s and … [Read more...]
Lloyd Cole and All the Poets
[contextly_auto_sidebar] YOUR humble blogger has been a fan of Lloyd Cole since songs like Lost Weekend and Why I Love Country Music showed up on "alternative" radio in the mid-'80s. I've seen him perform and interviewed him numerous times since then, and have been struck by what a fine storyteller as well as what an intellectually curious and overall literary (whatever that means) cat he … [Read more...]
Two Los Angeles Choral Groups
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR reasons I don't entirely understand, I've had a harder time with vocal and choral music than most other sorts of classical music. The human voice is the first ostensibly musical instrument we ever hear -- why should it not strike strike my ear and naturally as the violin, cello or piano? In any case, I've tried to make up for it this year by seeing more … [Read more...]
Jan Swafford and Classical Music
[contextly_auto_sidebar] YOUR humble blogger is a longtime fan of the classical music writer Jan Swafford, ever since friend gave me his lucid and wise Vintage guide. Swafford, who's known for biographies of Beethoven, Brahms, and Ives, has just released The Language of the Spirit, an introduction of a different sort. I corresponded with the author for a piece on the LA Review of … [Read more...]
The Late, Great Kevin Starr
[contextly_auto_sidebar] LIKE a lot of people, I was originally baffled when I moved to California, which in my case was 20 years ago, this July. Some of the key to its complex code arrived in the books of historian Kevin Starr, which begin with statehood and move epoch-by-epoch to the early post-World War II years. Today I have a sort of appreciation of the man, who I regret to say I met … [Read more...]