It’s very possible Wildflowers was the last album I purchased while living in my college town. I stuck around for roughly a year and a half following my graduation, working a thankless movie theater management job and soothing my post-collegiate … Continue reading One for Friday: Tom Petty, “Wildflowers”
This series of posts is dedicated to the many, many six packs, pony kegs and pints that have sauntered into my life at one point or another. I’m learning to be less precious about the beers I collect in my … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Fort George Brewery The Optimist
On September 20, 1973, Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, with great ceremonial adornments, strode to the center of the playing field of the Houston Astrodome, where a tennis court had been put in place. The event was billed as … Continue reading Now Playing: Battle of the Sexes
For me, Tom Petty’s career was a recurring invitation of rediscovery. The Florida native delivered his first album with the Heartbreakers in 1976, which put him right on the cusp of artists who, in my perception, had simply always been … Continue reading Tom Petty, 1950 – 2017
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. Today, The Onion posted … Continue reading Laughing Matters — The Onion, ‘No Way to Prevent This’
2. R.E.M., “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” At the time R.E.M. released their fifth studio album, Document, in 1987, the little ol’ band from Athens, Georgia was still adamantly against a … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 2
A couple of weeks back, a friend of mine was kind enough to share some airtime with me. After participating in the reunion weekend for my old college radio station two years runnings, I decided I was up for swinging … Continue reading From the Archive — Pleased to Meet Me
This is it, friends. This is exactly what 1980 sounded like. The single “Girls Are Always Right,” from the U.K. new wave band Any Trouble, has some Joe Jackson to it. And Elvis Costello, and Graham Parker, and Marshall Crenshaw. … Continue reading One for Friday — Any Trouble, “Girls Are Always Right”
I remember when Stephen King’s novel It was first published, in 1986. Then only a dozen years into his career as a novelist — but already claiming nearly twenty books to his credit — King was an unstoppable force in … Continue reading Now Playing: It
The books are massive, which makes them intimidating. Just glancing at one of the spines, likely wide enough to place a comfortably discernible portrait on it, is enough to tingle up a feeling of exhaustion. And yet one of the … Continue reading My Writers: Robert Caro
Coffee for Two 