The Archives
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10.07.09Ronnie Scott’s, 1989: my (literal) brush with fameA recent article in The Guardian about the 50th anniversary of London jazz club Ronnie Scott's reminded me of my own visit to the Soho music venue in 1989, the club's 30th anniversary year. It was one of the best performances, jazz or otherwise, that I've seen, and a memorable adventure all in all. I was a student at Queen Mary College, living in the Redbridge suburb of South Woodford; British professors set a very low bar for American students, so I took advantage of their deflated expectations and explored the city every chance I got. While in Soho, ...
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09.17.09Mary Travers, RIPMy parents were squares in the '60s. When it came time to raid their record collection, there were no Jim Hendrix, Canned Heat, or Creedence Clearwater Revival albums to discover (those were in my cool uncle's stacks). Instead, there were Time-Life classical sets, Herb Alpert, some show tunes, and lots of folk revival records. And of the latter, heavy on the Kingston Trio and Irish Rovers, it was the Peter, Paul and Mary records I loved the most. What made those records so wonderful was Mary's voice. It was so different from the Joan Baez and Joni ...
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07.10.09remember me, but forget my fateWhile setting up my garage sale yesterday, I listened to Kerri Miller's interview with Dr. Ronald Mallett, a physicist who is seriously working on the problem of time travel. Mallett's proposal, involving a ring laser, is less about sending people or objects through time, but more about sending information. That his work was inspired by his father's early death, and that Mallett's ideal message from the future would be a warning to his father to take better care of his heart, makes the efforts that much more poignant. I wondered, though, if a message from the future would be ...
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06.26.09The city winks a sleepless eyeI'm in the right age cohort for Michael Jackson's music, but I was never a fan. When "Thriller" was a monster hit on pop radio, I was listening to pompous art rock--"Asia" was the first record I bought with my own money, followed in quick succession by items from the back catalog of Yes, Kansas, Jethro Tull, and Led Zeppelin. When making an album choice, I'd scan the track lengths, and if anything clocked in at under five minutes I'd dismiss it as insipid pop and move on. By the time Michael Jackson had become weird, I was learning ...
