I’ve never much cared for the musical genre broadly known as Americana, and lately I’ve been thinking about why this is. I suppose it’s acceptable to say hey, I’ve listened to a […]
On Richard Pryor: It was something he said
The great medieval poet Geoffrey Chaucer created timeless characters in his Canterbury Tales; archetypal personalities such as the Wife of Bath and the Miller endure to this day. Through them Chaucer could […]
30-Day Song Challenge, day 12: a song from a band I hate
I talk a lot about generational dynamics and have been known to criticize the collective shortcomings of the Boomers and Millennials. I’ve also allowed that my generation (X) has some failings of […]
Children of the City of Certainties, part 1: in 1954
Children feel both overawed and utterly repulsed by their parents. We are children, going from literal to hidden to metaphorical to crisis childhood, careening from pillar to post across the jukebox townships that are our lives. All of us, all, spin out skeins of push and pull, memory and revision, a miserable, familiar, exquisite chrysalis of family that promises a moth that cannot emerge…
Unsolicited Pimpage: Rock & Roll Tribe
Here’s another in our occasional unsolicited shout-outs to people and groups we like. You’re probably hooked into a variety of social networks, but Rock & Roll Tribe is a little different. It […]
She had me understanding
In the photo, she stands with her hands crossed at her waist. She wears a bracelet on her right forearm and a thin gold watch whose faces flares like a tiny sun […]
The sweetest place on earth
“A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step,” my horoscope said. I’ll literally be taking a journey of a thousand-plus miles when I get to China in another week, but […]
Boomers, part 5: Woodstock nation…
The arrival of The Beatles in February of 1964 and the subsequent cultural changes they fostered (whether consciously or not) paralleled momentous changes in the American social and political landscape. From 1964-70 […]
Boomers, part 4: "…that old crazy Asian war…"
The Boomer generation’s view of war and the purposes of war was and is the result of United States involvement in Vietnam. Unlike subsequent generations, Boomers (at least males and tangentially females) […]
Boomers, part 3: Beatle and other manias…
Ceci n’est pas Pink #@#@^&%$ Floyd… Historians often argue that dates should not be the focus of history. Hell, much of the last quarter century has been dominated by intellectuals arguing that […]
Progressive Culture | Scholars & Rogues 