Alby's Latest Posts
Song of the Day 5/5: Leon Russell, “Alcatraz”
Having run out of old fixations to issue executive orders about, low-flow toilets have been conquered, Trump unveiled some new ones yesterday, and they’re even dumber than the old ones. A 100% tariff on foreign-produced movies is a non-starter, as there’s no way to apply it and movies are explicitly exempted from the law he’s […]
Song of the Day 5/4: Jill Sobule, “America Back”
Singer-songwriter Jill Sobule died early Thursday in a house fire in Minnesota. Every obit identifies her by her 1995 single, “I Kissed a Girl,” a queer milestone as the first openly gay-themed song to chart (No. 20 Modern Rock, No. 67 Hot 100). It did catapult her to brief fame, but it was her political […]
DL Open Thread Saturday, May 3, 2025
Speed bumps on Newark’s Main Street? There’s pressure to make that happen after a stolen U-Haul van fatally struck a student, eight months after another student was killed by a motorcyclist fleeing from police. Another Trump revenge tantrum executive order has been ruled unconstitutional. People who moaned that the courts are all in Trump’s corner […]
Song of the Day 5/2: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, “The Twist”
Discussing the induction of Chubby Checker into the rock and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nathan Arizona said one song – “The Twist,” obviously – shouldn’t be enough to get someone in. Why not? It already got Hank Ballard inducted. Ballard, who headlined the vocal group the Midnighters, had other hits, but he didn’t […]
Song of the Day 5/1: Ed Pickford, “The Workers’ Song”
It’s International Workers’ Day, something Americans don’t observe – socialism has never appealed to a nation full of millionaires-in-waiting. Well, too bad, capitalist scum. It’s unlikely the workers of the world will ever unite, but you can’t stop them from protesting their lot. Ed Pickford, a protest singer from northeastern England, has written a lot […]
Song of the Day 4/30: Counting Crows, “Spaceman in Tulsa”
This song, released in February, hasn’t made El Somnambulo’s list of faves (I’m not sure it qualifies yet by his rules), but it caught my ear the other day when it played on WXPN. I could only hear faint snatches of it from an upstairs bedroom, so it wasn’t clear enough for Adam Duritz’s distinctive […]
Song of the Day 4/29: Chubby Checker, “Let’s Twist Again”
For me, the biggest surprise among this year’s inductees to the Rock Hall of Fame was Chubby Checker, who popularized the twist and several other novelty dances, and whose hit-making days ended in 1965 – or so I thought. Ernest Evans, nicknamed Chubby, was brought up in South Philly – teen idol Fabian was a […]
Song of the Day 4/28: Bad Company, “Can’t Get Enough”
At this point I’m not even going to bother slagging the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s decisions about who does and doesn’t get in. By now everybody knows that bands and artists of some renown are snubbed for years, usually for reasons unknown, while others with tenuous connections to rock and roll are admitted. […]
Song of the Day 4/27: The Velvet Underground, “Sunday Morning”
This first track on the first album by the Velvet Underground couldn’t be more misleading – with its full production it sounds nothing like the rest of that seminal LP. It was written for Nico by Lou Reed and John Cale with the singles market in mind, but when it came time to record it […]
Song of the Day 4/25: Starship, “Sara”
A reminder of how far Republican politics has sunk was highlighted earlier this week in New York when Sarah Palin – ‘memba her? – lost her libel case against the New York Times again. The woman who broke the intellectual glass floor on holding important public office set the template for a whole generation of […]
Song of the Day 4/24: The Pointer Sisters, “Fire”
New Jersey’s largest wildfire in 20 years has consumed more than 13,000 acres in Ocean County, not far from Bruce Springsteen’s old stomping grounds. That’s not the kind of fire he wrote this song about, though. After he saw Elvis Presley perform at the Spectrum in May 1977, Springsteen wrote this slow-burner and sent a […]
Song of the Day 4/23: The Contours, “First I Look at the Purse”
MAGAts like to project a tough, scary image, but their frequent fuck-ups undercut the bluster. For instance, Homeland Security chief Kristie Noem, known as ICE Barbie for posing in combat gear whenever possible, got her purse snatched the other day in a D.C. restaurant, Capital Burger. Her Secret Service detail never noticed though, to be […]
Song of the Day 4/22: Loudon Wainwright III, “Hard Day on the Planet”
This seems like an appropriate song for Earth Day in the age of Trump. Nearly every affliction Loudon Wainwright listed back in 1986 is still a problem today. He knows it, too. “I wrote it in the mid-80s when it seemed like everything was going to end. And so, it’s kind of a perennial, I […]
Recent Comments