Sgt. Pepper’s gets a lot of credit for launching the “concept album,” but it never would have happened without Brian Wilson and Pet Sounds. “We were fed up with being the Beatles. We […]
Not enough songs make use of the harmonium. “In ‘We Can Work It Out,’ Paul did the first half, I did the middle eight. But you’ve got Paul writing, ‘We can work […]
Let’s alcohol with happy gangster human… Third in my ongoing S&R Tokyo Series. Here’s part one and part two. In Asakusa at Kamiya Bar (神谷バー) you never know who you might meet. […]
Dylan gonna be Dylan. But in his memoir he reminds us why he’s Dylan. “I’d come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about […]
Our lives are full of Kodak moments, even now. The New York Times estimates there will be 1.3 trillion photos taken this year. Granted, the signal:noise ratio is low. A vast majority of […]
“Don’t Pass Me By” is a rollicking faux country blues honk and the fiddle part is as crazy as Ringo says. It’s charming, funny, and totally Ringo. For a first effort, it’s […]
Second in my S&R Tokyo series… Yasukuni Shrine is an interesting place, but I won’t make more of visiting it than doing so deserves. Suffice it to say the Japanese struggle spiritually […]
“Full grown men, full of emotion and on top of the world. Meet the Beatles.” – Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone (Part 1 here) When Bob Dylan met the Beatles in late August […]
“Cry Baby Cry” is exactly what we would expect a nursery rhyme to be: a charming sing-a-long with a dark message at its core. “…I think I got them from an advert […]
First in an upcoming series on Tokyo, Japan, and life generally… This is brief recounting of two men from very different walks of Japanese life, whom I encountered in Tokyo near Ueno […]
