Tag: music
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Music: Who’s Driving This Train?
Here’s a fresh piece from the semi-frozen garage: Andy’s and my first experiment with the “blues stick,” the 3-string electric cigar box guitar that my daughter and son-in-law gave me this Christmas. I like the way we don’t need a drum track to keep up our steady rhythm, which feels as inevitable as the train…
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Fantasy drinking companion (2024)
I feel emboldened. “Bob, one of your songs declares, ‘Don’t ask me nothin’ about nothin’. I just might tell you the truth.’ So I’m not gonna ask you nothin’ about nothin’. We’ll deal with whatever truth arises.”
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Memoir: Musical Madeleines (1970-73) (1983-85)
“… in that time Taupin’s protagonists grew dark with a growing awareness of corruption and human depravity–strong stuff for 12-year-old me.”
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Music: “Grown Old,” my 1986 reflection on the 1968 Chicago riots
As the Chicago DNC wound down last week, I recorded this song, which I wrote when a callow 24 year old. It was my take on how the 1968 yippie riot generation had aged, fifteen years on. At that time in my life I was starting to work closely with wealthy liberals and so got…
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Memoir: something that went bump in my night, or my first time with the Violent Femmes (1983)
Finks is a second-floor music club on Normal’s Front Street, where they have Augsberger (Light and Dark) on tap. I am 22, a grad student at ISU, and the unappointed taste maker and music critic of my Central Illinois metropolis. I am qualified, having read books by Griel Marcus, listened to old blues recordings, subscribed…
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Memoir: a holiday tradition I no longer do
At the risk of sounding racist, maybe it’s the German roots– the reason for the strong musical culture of Elmhurst, Illinois. The Germans who settled there in the 1860s,–Messers Wolf, Glos, Schumacher and Heidemann–loved their Bach, Brahams, and Beethoven. They along with the kapellmeisters at the German language seminary (the future Elmhurst University) may have…
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Memoir: from Captain Fantastic (1974) to Quadrophenia (1980)
The music hadn’t changed a bit. But I had.
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Memoir: A skill I’m grateful for
At ten-years old I felt confused by life and my place in it. My sad mood set me apart from my peers, and one day I found myself singing my alienation in a way that soothed me. It went, No one told me why, Sweet Jesus, no one told me why./No one told me why…
The Wikiness 