Alby's Latest Posts
Song of the Day 10/12: Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
I saw a story last week by a mom whose tweenage daughter told her the term “preppy” equates to “people who wear Nirvana shirts.” It seems that what the youngster called “old band shirts” have replaced sweatshirts emblazoned with merchandiser names (remember Hollister?) as the uni du jour among a certain set. It’s a humorous […]
Song of the Day 10/11: Talking Heads, “Life During Wartime”
The Talking Heads concert film “Stop Making Sense” is getting as much critical acclaim in its recent rerelease as it did when it opened in theaters back in 1984, maybe because the band’s sense of apocalyptic absurdity fits our present reality so well. Enjoy it while you can. As this New Yorker piece makes clear, […]
DL Open Thread Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2023
Whether you’re rooting for Israel or Hamas, the media has plenty of atrocity stories to stoke your righteous ire. I’m not linking to any of them because I don’t think war porn serves any useful purpose. For an overview of what the fighting is about, refer to this editorial cartoon. Saddest part of the Israel-Hamas […]
Song of the Day 10/10: U2, “Pride (In the Name of Love)”
Did Hamas deliberately single out the Tribe of Nova trance music festival, where they massacred at least 260 people and took an unknown number hostage? It wouldn’t be the first time terrorists have struck a music audience – the attack on an Eagles of Death Metal concert in Paris’ Bataclan killed 90 people and wounded […]
DL Open Thread Tuesday, October 10, 2023
I’m not following the Hamas-Israeli conflict, but as sportswriter Hugh Keough (not Damon Runyan) observed, “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that is the way to bet.” An even safer bet: Palestinians in Gaza will bear the brunt of the human cost. Another sure winner: The […]
DL Open Thread Monday, October 9, 2023
Do House Republicans hand out Speaker of the House bonus points for being a kiddie diddler? Dennis Hastert, former high school wrestling coach, served in the office. Now America’s drooling class wants to put Jim Jordan in the job, and while nobody has implicated him in the actual molestation that took place while he was […]
Song of the Day 10/7: Fred Neil, “Dolphins”
Guest post by Nathan Arizona Fred Neil wrote a sad, beautiful and enduring song called “The Dolphins” as a Greenwich Village folk singer in the mid-1960s. “I’ve been searching for the dolphins in the sea,” he sang plaintively. He doesn’t find them. Neil, who suffered from stage fright, soon dropped out of the music business […]
Song of the Day 10/6: The Sex Pistols, “Pretty Vacant”
They would never admit it, even to themselves, but the Freedom Caucus apparently is in favor of anarchy in the U.S. House, which makes the Sex Pistols the perfect soundtrack for their exercise in nihilism. According to original bassist Glen Matlock, who wrote the song, “‘Pretty Vacant’ is a primal scream kind of thing: We […]
Song of the Day 10/5: The Kinks, “Situation Vacant”
With a tip o’ the sombrero to El Som. Yoohoo, anybody home? House Republicans are demonstrating that maybe men do too think about the Roman Empire too much, and no that good comes of it. One online reviewer called this tune “a classic Ray Davies character piece in which ambition leads to misery.” That sounds […]
Song of the Day 10/4: Buffalo Springfield, “On the Way Home”
Buffalo Springfield had broken up by the time their third and final album, “Last Time Around,” was released in 1968. The LP was assembled from previously recorded material to fulfill the band’s contract commitment. Neil Young’s “On the Way Home” was one of the earliest, recorded in late 1967, after the return of Young, who […]
DL Open Thread Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023
Chris Coons must be having the mother of all sads today. After Kave-in McCarthy was ousted as House speaker, a GOP member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus told CNN that Republicans in the group are considering quitting en masse because none of its Democratic members voted to retain him. Republicans apparently can’t conceive of […]
Song of the Day 10/3: The Ramones, “Why Is It Always This Way?”
Elon Musk’s fascist leanings are obvious at this point, and Russian state TV put a fine point on it yesterday by bragging that “Elon Musk really is our agent.” That got me thinking about “Rocket to Russia,” the Ramones’ third album. Unfortunately for the band that essentially invented punk rock, it came out just as […]
DL Open Thread Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2023
Matt Gaetz – am I the only one who thinks he looks like a low-quality AI rendering of a young Jack Nicholson? – has pulled the trigger on his threat to depose Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House. This puts McCarthy’s fate in the hands of House Democrats; Josh Marshall weighs the pros and […]
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