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Doghouse Reilly visits the soundscape
Nominations day is tomorrow for the Peoples Pop Polls' World Cup Of Soundtracks, the caveat being that the track has to have made it onto a soundtrack record (album, single, official playlist) and that the record has to be the track's first appearance ( Read more... ) -
Train Kept A-Rollin'
When I was trying to be a guitarist I'd marvel at Jeff Beck, because you just never knew where he was going to put the note - instead of playing a guitar line he'd just hold the tone for as long as he could. And then a fuzz on and a fuzz off, and later, fast, a tense start, quick splintered notes, losing their balance, about to crash ( Read more... ) -
"With their own lives" (Mark Sinker on Tove Jansson)
My friend Mark Sinker, on Tove Jansson (link):
except for readers in the US, where they never quite took off
E.g., me, for whom it is an unknown universe.
This, by Mark, is - seriously - one of the great descriptions I've read in my life, the entire paragraph, of which these are the final three sentences:
Here and there small unidentified beasts ( Read more... ) -
End-Of-Year 2021 ballots, etc., Pt. 3 (Expert Witnesses Poll)
Just Tuesday I sent my ballot for the Uproxx critics poll for 2022. For my “outlets” I put "Dreamwidth" and "Peoples Pop Polls." I hope Philip doesn’t actually know what Dreamwidth is and decide to disqualify me. The reason I didn’t put “koganbot” is that I’d already put @koganbot as my Twitter handle ( Read more... ) -
"These numbers challenge our understanding of football."
I guess if you'd asked me "Are there more quarterback runs and scrambles in the last couple of years?" I'd have said, "Uh, hmm, yeah, I guess so; yeah, I think I've noticed that; it's more than just Baltimore."
But this piece last week by Ben Solak, incl. statistics, really is an eye opener ("The Simple Math Behind the Colts' Decision to Turn to ( Read more... ) -
Glance
A couple excerpts from Dylan's Philosophy Of Modern Song are up at the NY Times (here, or if that doesn't work, hereReading the introduction by Ben Sisario I was thinking, "He [Dylan] is reimagining 'Strangers In The Night' as the sudden eyeball connection between Miss Lonely and The Mystery Tramp/Napoleon In Rags." But when I read the actual ( Read more... ) -
Woman In Funk Carioca
A young woman in a Brazilian funk video, she's lying on a couch, an older woman (probably her mom) in the next room; the young woman gets up and dances down the stairs and out the door, dances along the narrow street, happy, passes others in her dance; rain starts, she keeps dancing, turns around, dances home, into the building, back to her couch ( Read more... ) -
The Moray Eels eat the Holy Modal Rounders and the Velvet Underground & Nico for dessert
In 2013 I wrote a couple of blurbs that I'm still proud of for Spin's "Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s": The Moray Eels Eat The Holy Modal Rounders and The Velvet Underground & Nico. Linked them on my LJ at the time, w/ my critique and commentary, lotsa critique - criticized the cake and ate it too! - here: "Concrete toes and pigeons' feet ( Read more... ) -
Ain't gonna hang no picture frame (top 10 westerns)
About a month ago I accidentally ran into a Twitter film poll of top ten westerns and I thought “Why not?” and this is what I posted:
The Searchers
Two Road Together
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Red River
The Wild Bunch
For A Few Dollars More
Day Of The Outlaw
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Seven Men From Now
I Shot Jesse James
( Read more... ) -
TSJ our glorious blah blah blah, "like trying to have a conversation with a pile of cigarette butts"
For me, my greatest Jukebox moment was Ke$ha's "Blah Blah Blah" - it isn't that what I wrote was so good - it was okay, and what I wrote in the comments was genuinely exploratory about the song's clatter making me think of "Mony Mony" - though I did get to work out those thoughts better on my blog - it's that when I started writing my blurb, song ( Read more... )