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If you’ve been following the series, you may have noticed that instead of simply offering up a song that fits the criteria (“a song you love from the ’00s”), I’m trying to write about songs that are in some way definitive. Maybe it was something that typified a dominant movement, or perhaps it was a tune that marked an important point in my personal narrative. Whatever, I’ve been trying to write a series not just about songs, but about significant songs. And that’s what I’m going to keep doing, starting right now. Full story »

I wish the Republicans would slow down. It’s no fun being prescient when you’re proved right as soon as you hit the “publish post” button.

• In this case, in earlier editions of GOP Madness, I suggested Pawlenty would have some trouble getting away from previous positions of his, and sure enough I saw him on TV a few days ago, admitting he’d made mistakes and begging for a mulligan. Well, the latest polls are out and it looks like the voters will give him a mulligan, but they ain’t gonna elect him president. As expected, he’s dragging up the rear, way behind Romney, Gingrich, Huckabee and the real contenders.
• I also suggested that Trump was the clown in a little car sent out to warm up the crowd before the real acts entered the ring. Full story »

For a long time – basically, from the British Invasion through the end of the ’80s – there was a great deal of shared history between the rock of America and the UK. What was happening on one side of the pond made its way in short order to the other side, and this was generally a good thing.

But then the 1990s rolled around and the exchange program collapsed seemingly overnight. Over here we had Grunge, second-wave Punk, Alternative, Industrial, Jam bands and Hootie & the Motherfucking Blowfish. Full story »

Donovan McNabb must have been a serial killer in a past life.

If you’re him, you’d probably think the ins and outs and ups and downs of plying one of the hardest positions on all of professional sports would be challenge enough. Every time you take a snap several members of the opposing defense are looking to rip your spleen out. Some of the smartest minds in the game are sitting in the press box scheming ways of lying to you – looks like your basic Cover 2, and all of a sudden you’ve audibled into precisely the worst play possible and by the way, you don’t see that corner coming off the blind side at all, do you? To make it worse, last year you had to deal with all of this while trying to learn a new offensive system and adjusting to life in the Daniel Snyder/Mike Shanahan DramaWorld theme park.

You’d think this would be enough, but you’d be wrong. Full story »

When I got to my mother’s house the first thing I did was give her the once-over.  Old age was upon her.  Her face was gaunt with waxy wrinkles, and sunspots along her cheeks.  Her gray hair was coarse with only a small semblance of the wonderful brown hair she used to boast.  Her nightgown was worn, and very soft as a result.  Then I looked at her feet that were shoved into brand new over-sized powder puff slippers.  But there was a smell in the air that made me wonder about hygiene.

“Check the refrigerator,” she said.

“Christ, are you still on that?”

The refrigerator door was closed.  It was her obsessive-compulsive thing.

“It’s fine,” I followed.  “You hear that?  That’s me knocking on it.  And now I’m opening it…and shutting it…and open…and shut…”

“If it’s closed, then good,” she said.  “The energy bill’s gone up every month since Thanksgiving.  It must be something.” Full story »

I am heartbroken.

We just got a letter from a small charity we support in Chicago, Jamal Place. Jamal Place provided social and vocational services for underprivileged young men, many of whom had some level of disability. They are closing their doors due to lack of funding.

Today I am supposed to be doing what I get paid to do these days in my semi-retirement, writing an important speech for an important man. But instead I am sitting here, staring at the keyboard and unable to find a single noun or verb on the topic of “changing business models.” Instead the only words that will come are words of sadness for a little pissant, underfunded charity that I knew was always one bad week away from closing its doors anyway.

Five years ago, my daughter invited us to a fundraiser for Jamal Place. Full story »

I’ve always thought that Dream Academy’s “Life in a Northern Town” was just about as perfect a pop song as it is possible to write. The story captivates. The tune itself is so intuitive that it feels like it has been inside me my whole life, waiting for an artist to set it free. As for the performance and production, it is impossible to imagine a single, minute addition, subtraction or alteration that wouldn’t lessen the song’s effect.

If ever there has been a greater one-hit wonder I don’t know who it was, and it’s hard not to feel bad for the band. Full story »

Jeffrey Dean Foster and Friends

Review – Concert Performance: An Evening with Jeffrey Dean Foster and Friends featuring Special Guests Greg Humphreys, Sam Frazier and Snüzz (Britt Harper Uzzell). April 29th, 2011. Hanes Brands Theater, Winston-Salem, NC. Photo Credit: Merch Mike.

As we become a distributed culture, one of the things that, instead of being eviscerated as I’d once hoped, has become perhaps more pronounced is the “siloing” of artists. Writers, visual artists – and especially, musicians – get categorized by some aspect of their artistic vision that more often than not is either idiosyncratic to the categorizer or, worse, convenient for “marketing.” Full story »

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Part one in a series.

How do we know if a student is sufficiently “educated”? Think about that for a minute. Did any of these come to mind? “They graduated from high school.” “They got into a good college.” “They got good grades.” “They scored well on their standardized tests.” Take it one step further: how do we know if the school or teacher is “good?” Maybe the student was naturally smart and no one else contributed anything to his or her being “educated.” How do we know?

It’s a good question—and a really important one. A popular topic in legislatures and in the media across the company is “merit pay” for teachers: paying teachers, in part (sometimes a large part), based on the “quality” of education they deliver. Full story »

I remember a conversation with an old girlfriend back in the late 1990s. We were talking about the sounds of the times, I guess you’d say, and I commented that the decade had been dominated by a lot of pretty rebellious music. Grunge, Punk, Industrial – everybody was well and truly pissed off, it seemed. The music of my youth hadn’t been terribly revolutionary by comparison, I thought.

This particular girlfriend turned out to be wrong about quite a lot before all was said and done, but she made a very good point that I’ve never forgotten. Full story »

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 lot of these artists and most of them just kinda bore me, but that seems unsatisfactory for a guy who thinks about music like I do.

After some reflection, I think it comes down to a couple of issues. The first one, I admit right up front, is objectively unfair of me, but there is a part of me that associates Americana with the Baby Boomers, and in particular sees it as a late, faint attempt by the post-Reagan iteration of the cohort to recapture lost authenticity. Full story »

I know I threatened yesterday to play some more Sam Cooke for my 1960s entry, but I’m trying to spread the love around and prop as many great artists as I can, so how about some Van Morrison instead?

Full story »

Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan referred to killing Osama bin Laden as ”decapitating the head of the snake known as al Qaida.” Bloodthirsty choice of words, especially considering that decapitation has been one of al Qaeda’s preferred modes of execution, most notoriously, Daniel Pearl at the likely hands of  9/11 “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

In the past, when humans were beheaded as punishment, the instrument of death was usually an axe or guillotine. Leave it to members of al Qaeda to take throat cutting to extremes. Perhaps they hoped Allah would accept a victim thus butchered as a sacrificial offering. Full story »

Full story »

I’ve always been convinced that the greatest R&B singer who ever lived was Sam Cooke. I know, that’s a massive claim and there are plenty of Otis fans (and Aretha fans, and fans of many other incredible artists) who’ll argue the point. And hey, if they do, then I can take pride in the fact that I started a great argument.

The point is that I pretty much worship Sam Cooke. Most of his greatest work came in the ’60s, but he had several hits in the late 1950s, too. Full story »