Alby's Latest Posts
Song of the Day 5/17: Childish Gambino, “Redbone”
Actor Donald Glover has been busy the last several years, notably by playing Lando Calrissian in a Star Wars prequel and starring in an Amazon Prime series, a remake of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” that Glover created himself. His hip-hop alter ego, Childish Gambino, had rarely surfaced after the unfortunately timed album dubbed “3.15.20” was […]
Song of the Day 5/16: Louis Prima, “I Wanna Be Like You”
The sad spectacle of Trump’s gaggle of suckups convening outside his trial in New York – in matching outfits, no less – made me think of this tune from Disney’s 1967 animated “Jungle Book.” The Disney people had to pitch the idea to Prima, who responded, “You want to make a monkey out of me? […]
Song of the Day 5/15: David Sanborn, “Hideaway”
Alto saxophonist David Sanborn’s music is usually categorized as smooth jazz, much to his chagrin. Sanborn, who died Sunday at age 78, released 25 albums leading his own band, incorporating rock, R&B and gospel into with the jazz, but no matter, you’ll find them filed under Jazz, Smooth. They don’t even care that Sanborn’s playing […]
DL Open Thread Wednesday, May 15, 2024
You can tell Donald Trump has been stung by the fact that, contrary to what pollsters will tell you, he doesn’t have all that many diehard fans. The proof: He issued call after call for his supposed minions to show up at his trial in New York, and was rewarded with crowds in the single […]
DL Open Thread Tuesday, May 14, 2024
As H.L. Mencken said a century ago, every human problem has a solution that is neat, plausible and wrong. Keep that in mind when you read about the health care cost review board. It looks set to happen after lawmakers amended their bill, which is supposedly going to rein in the state’s hospital costs. I […]
Song of the Day 5/13: Baby Lasagna, “Rim Tim Tagi Dim”
Eurovision, the international song contest, rarely makes the news in America, but it’s a big deal in Europe, a sort of a musical Olympics that pits one musical act from each of two dozen or so participating countries, most of them European. They’ve been holding it since 1956, and it’s grown into a live TV […]
DL Open Thread Monday, May 13, 2024
A little wake-up call for anyone who thinks putting Republicans in power would help the Palestinians in Gaza: South Carolina lickspittle Lindsay Graham wants Israel to nuke Gaza. It won’t happen, of course, because if they did Jared Kushner would be deprived of all that waterfront real estate. I’m not saying everyone in MAGA World […]
Song of the Day 5/12: Pixies, “Where Is My Mind?”
This is a question two presidential candidates who aren’t Joe Biden should be asking themselves. They could use this tune as a soundtrack. Black Francis said the song was inspired by a scuba dive in the Caribbean, but movies have been using it for years to signal a character’s inability to recognize reality. It was […]
Song of the Day 5/10: Redd Kross, “Candy Coloured Catastrophe”
El Somnambulo left this one off his list of his favorite new tunes of April, maybe because he didn’t get a chance to hear it – it dropped April 29. Or maybe because he’s not a big fan of Redd Kross, formed as a punk band in Hawthorne, Calif., in the late ’70s by brothers […]
Song of the Day 5/9: Harold Arlen, “Stormy Weather”
Contentious cross-examination of porn star Stormy Daniels made this an inevitable tabloid headline. I started humming this Harold Arlen standard, now 91 years old, as soon as I read it. Arlen composed a lot of tunes that made the Great American Songbook – “Let’s Fall in Love,” “That Old Black Magic,” “One for My Baby […]
Song of the Day 7/8: Graham Parker and the Rumour, “Mercury Poisoning”
H/t El Somnambulo It must be something in the water, nanoplastics or something, because suddenly politicians are saying shit that nobody looking for votes should ever say. First it was the Dogslayer, now it’s RFK Jr. saying a worm ate part of his brain … and, oh yes, also, he had mercury poisoning. I say […]
DL Open Thread Wednesday, May 8, 2024
If you want to dominate the headlines, it helps to be the defendant in four legal proceedings simultaneously. Luckily for Trump, the one serious crime he’s accused of, stealing top-secret documents, is the one that was paused indefinitely by MAGA judge Aileen Cannon. Meanwhile, the judge in his New York falsifying-business-records case – that’s what […]
Song of the Day 5/7: “Weird Al” Yankovic, “Fat”
You can tell Donnie Two Scoops is on Ozempic (or Wegovy, they’re the same thing, just different doses) because he’s taken to mocking people for being fat. At a fundraiser in Texas for Rep. Ronny Jackson, the erstwhile White House doctor who lied about Trump’s weight, Trump said Tester “looks pregnant to me. … He […]
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