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Perfect Moments: The Author’s Book, to Its Author
[Ed. Note: minor identifying details of this recently discovered letter have been obscured, to preserve the anonymity of the parties involved.] Dear J_____, So, you have finally finished me. I suppose I should offer not only thanks but congratulations to you — if so, then, sure: Congratulations! But I also can’t help thinking that maybe we [...]
Midweek Music Break: Bix Beiderbecke, “I’m Coming, Virginia”
Jazz cornetist Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke’s life sketched out the template for generations of stereotypical pop-music biographies to come: self-taught musician comes out of the suburbs of Nowheresville, remakes his chosen genre — wowing the pros — while laboring in the chains of commercialism, and dies, in mysterious, seedy circumstances, before the age of 30… leaving behind [...]
Midweek Music Break: “The Swingin’ Shepherd Blues”
Alto saxophonist and flautist Moe Koffman had been kicking around the Canadian and US jazz world for years by the time — in 1957 — he composed a number for the jazz flute he originally called “Blues à la Canadiana.” His producer suggested a title change; ever since, it’s been known as “The Swingin’ Shepherd Blues.” [...]
Catless
Yeah. That, alas — for the first time in twenty years. We’d known the day was coming, known it for months now. A sad realization, to be sure. But not the same sort of sadness as to find it suddenly so… Katie lived longer than the other two indoor cats we had — somewhere around [...]
Perfect Moments: Two Beautiful Women, a Certain Amount of Booze, and Maybe I’ve Got a Story…!
In the mid-1990s, boy, was I ever confused, perplexed, and probably (by many measures) in need of adjustment. Especially about my writing. Here’s what my quote-unquote oeuvre consisted of then: A non-fiction Op Ed memoir(ish) piece in a regional edition of the New York Times. A published mystery. (Depending on who I was talking to at [...]
Perfect Moments: “I Shot ‘im, Paw.”
The house in which The Missus and I live now is over twenty years old, as is our immediate neighborhood. But the area in general has only recently started to get built up. Real honest-to-gods wildlife, not yet squeezed out by housing and new roads, can still be spotted here and there — foxes, a [...]
Real-Life Dialogue: Wardrobe Culling Edition
[The scene: a suburban home in North Florida, USA. He has stayed home from work on this day to prepare a guest bedroom for painting. In this guest bedroom is a closet, and in the closet are His clothes. All of them. Woven shirts, knit shirts, jeans, suits, ties, socks, underwear, shoes... It's not a [...]
Midweek Music Break: Switched-On Bach
If not for 1968′s Switched-On Bach, I’m not sure I’d ever have paid much attention to classical music. I don’t know why I bought the album, unless in fascination with the sheer weirdness of the concept. As far as I knew then, no one within shouting distance of my life listened to classical music. I didn’t read [...]
Midweek Music Break: Jazzy Joni
Joni Mitchell, or so I thought around the time I first heard of her, epitomized the sweet-and-fragile visuals of hippie-folk culture. (With her long straight blonde hair, oh-so-slender frame and a voice to match, with her acoustic guitar and simple attire, she seemed a Mary Travers wannabe — maybe her gawky delicate second or third cousin, who [...]
Happy Birthday, the Erstwhile “Music” Television
MTV turned 30 years old at a minute past midnight today. After a voiceover saying,”Ladies and gentlemen: rock and roll!” and some promotional pieces, they overturned the music business with their very first video: The Buggles, and “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Lyrics: Video Killed the Radio Star (The Buggles) I heard you on the [...]
