It’s fun to paddle out and discover new things, but how about something as warm and familiar as a childhood blanket? For the many of us who grew up with Paul Simon, his voice truly is like one of the familiar comforts of home. He … Continue reading Still Crazy After All These Years
Here’s a perennial favorite that has come around again and again, becoming a hit every few years thanks to new artists covering it for a new listener generation. Everyone knows this song, though everyone most likely has a different version that they think of as … Continue reading Stand By Me
It’s always best to hear an Eno record in its entirety. Even when he stoops to having individuated songs, it’s the oblique narrative that flows through the whole that matters. Eventually, of course, you get to the ones where there’s not so much a flow … Continue reading St. Elmo's Fire
One of my all time favorite classic rock references in recent pop culture was an episode of the cult TV series Freaks and Geeks. In the episode, the main character, a teenager named Lindsay, asks her parents for permission to attend a Who concert. (The … Continue reading Squeeze Box
One gets the sense that all Tom Waits ever wanted was to be the piano player at some burlesque joint, preferably down the street from a greasy spoon. He really missed the boat on that one, growing up just when burlesque was going downhill. But … Continue reading Spare Parts II and Closing
In 1975 Tom Waits was seen as just another prematurely hoarse young man in a porkpie hat singing earnest songs about the travails of the drinking classes. Not entirely dissimilar from Bruce Springsteen or Randy Newman. It wasn’t selling him a whole lot of records … Continue reading Spare Parts I (A Nocturnal Emission)
Elton John has delivered decades’ worth of moving and dramatic performances, but this has to be the most moving. It is also, of course, one of the most personal. It recounts a particularly low point in John’s life, when he contemplated giving up his struggling … Continue reading Someone Saved My Life Tonight
Political commentary was never David Bowie’s wheelhouse, and when he goes there it tends to feel half-baked. Here, he’s into some loose concept of the manifest destiny of charismatic leaders, who are not dissimilar from rock stars in their larger-than-life appearance. It was a theme … Continue reading Somebody Up There Likes Me
Brian Eno remains the undisputed master of ambient and cinematic soundscapes, despite many people’s attempts to compete with him. Eno’s genius was to bring a pop sensibility to instrumental music; and to write pop with a composer’s ear. Obviously, it was pioneering and unusual for … Continue reading Sombre Reptiles
Before there was Moby, there was Eno. That is obvious. Before there were most things, there was Eno. MGMT even wrote a song about it. Brian Eno is the slow, inexorable trickle-down effect of personal weirdness bleeding influence into everything around it until it’s come … Continue reading Sky Saw
