Here's my story on Pollini's Nocturnes, aired last Wednesday. If you just wanna grab the RA file, go for it. He gave me a very chatty twenty minutes, even though everybody I asked beforehand reported him to be "monosyllabic." He was in Lucerne, Switzerland, doing press from his hotel room, and I … [Read more...]

When George Will can say something as racist as this on TV without a firestorm: "When you see Lamont standing there on victory night with Jesse Jackson looming over one shoulder, and Rev. Al Sharpton looming over the other, where does the Democratic death wish come from...? " [paraphrase] … [Read more...]

On last Friday's Front Porch with Eric Lott talking about the Dartmouth Dylan conference. … [Read more...]

"Does this Leonard Cohen trib pic have too many Canadians? Yes. Does he come from Montreal? Of course. Do they give Rufus two songs when Teddy T. has the better voice? Absolutely. Should they have interviewed some critics to provide a larger context? You bet. And where's Bruce Cockburn? Rebecca … [Read more...]

Joke of the week. (Audio) … [Read more...]

You don't see Wills genuflect all that often, except perhaps to St. Augustine or Abe. But I spent the vacation pouring through At Canaan's Edge by Taylor Branch, and it's to drool for. There's an intriguing unanswered question left dangling at the end: LBJ suddenly announces his withdrawal from … [Read more...]

Weird watching Munich a couple weeks back; it's soundtracked the Hezbollah crisis for me. Easily swamps Schindler's List in how Spielberg handles prickly moral themes; Geoffrey Rush is quiet and astounding; the Tarantino homage where PLO confront the Israelis at their "safe house" is a hoot. That … [Read more...]

SOFT FEATURE, SOFT EDIT Inexplicably missing from Rob Walker's report on Brand Underground are sites like Threadless, where you get to make up your own slogans and vote for designs. Walker did include a link to Cool Hunting, however, which is a clickfest for anti-fashion. … [Read more...]

ENORMOUS ADVANCE ON PINK SHEETS Fascination juggles perplexity in Monster House. Animation is top-notch, and the advances are plain even to a layman; a character like Chowder is sui generis and far more detailed than necessary, loveable even; the voicings are mostly bull's-eye etc. But the plot is … [Read more...]

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Everybody underrate comics, and satirists have an even arder time of it. Lewis Black's recent HBO special made the leap -- long stretches of his routine traded laughs for righteous, hard-earned bile. Herry Shearer has a Masters in Political Science from Harvard, you can look it up, but you'd never … [Read more...]

A little behind the beat on this, but when Kozinn makes remarks like this, you can bet people take notice: A couple of weeks ago Giles Martin stopped in New York on his way to London, and invited me to hear his "Love" mixes on a five-channel surround system at Magno Studios. I was knocked out by … [Read more...]

TAKE ME TO THE COUNTRY I had read about this record, but I didn't really expect it to be this good: James Talley's 1975 debut Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, but We Sure Got a Lot of Love (reissued by Cimarron). It's kind of heartbreaking to think how much talent slips through the system like … [Read more...]

Scott's response to the Observer's list, which has some very odd bedfellows, as Brits usually do. For RCD, TMW gets sandwiched between DISCO FEVER and GLENN GOULD, which pretty much sums up my high school persona: 19. Tell Me Why (Tim Riley): For all the zillion Beatle books that have been … [Read more...]

SCARED YOU'LL GET A WOODY? I mean really: you call this a LEAD?!?-- It has been many years since Westerns were essentially black-and-white, cut-and-dried stories of good versus evil: morality tales with lots o horses and guns and one of everything else—a sheriff, an outlaw, an embattled hero, a … [Read more...]