Arts and Entertainment
Song of the Day 4/29: The Platters, “With This Ring”
Some days there’s no news peg for the song, and you just get whatever has become my latest earworm. In this case it’s this tune, now best known among Northern Soul aficionados after serving as a comeback song for The Platters in 1967. It reached No. 14 in Billboard, the group’s first Top 20 hit […]
Song of the Day 4/27: Alan Price, “O Lucky Man”
We have entered a world where British tabloids now print the truth in order to dispel internet rumors. Take the case just this week of British musician Alan Price — don’t say “Alan who?” I’ll tell you in a moment — whose death briefly became a swiftly-spreading rumor on social media across the pond. He […]
Song of the Day 4/26: The Kinks, “Celluloid Heroes”
I should have posted this yesterday in advance of the Academy Awards, though the Hollywood Ray Davies was singing about — most of the stars he names were dead or retired when the song came out on “Everybody’s in Show-Biz” in 1972 — bears scant resemblance to today’s film industry. I doubt one person in […]
Song of the Day 4/24: Digital Underground, “The Humpty Dance”
Old school rap lost an influential figure this week. Greg Jacobs, better known as Shock G, the rapper who fronted the Oakland rap collective Digital Underground, was found dead in his Tampa hotel room Thursday at age 57. Though he went by Shock G, he also took on various alter-egos, the most famous being Humpty […]
Song of the Day 4/23: Bay City Rollers, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Love Letter”
You know rock is over the hill when the lead singer of the first boy band dies at age 65. Les McKeown, the lead singer for the Bay City Rollers in their heyday, died suddenly on April 20, cause still unknown. He was with the band for only five years, from 1973-78, but that included […]
Song of the Day 4/22: Ennio Morricone, “For a Few Dollars More”
The proposal to increase Delaware’s minimum raise to $15 an hour over the next several years got a House committee hearing longer than a Sergio Leone spaghetti western yesterday. It could have used a theme song from Ennio Morricone, the Italian composer most famous for scoring Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy. Morricone’s scores were one reason those […]
Song of the Day 4/20: Peter Tosh, “Legalize It”
Peter Tosh once told an interviewer that ganja would someday be as legal as cigarettes. That’s still years off, but as this handy map shows, in only six U.S. states, all of them deep red, does weed remain entirely illegal. Weigh that against 16 states (17 if you count D.C.) containing 43% of the population […]
Song of the Day 4/19: Pixies, “Here Comes Your Man”
Why did rock music sputter out after the 1990s? I don’t know the answer, but the anti-commercial pose that became de rigueur with punk and extended into the era of college radio and alternative bands couldn’t have helped. Consider this song by the Pixies, the closest thing they ever had to a hit in the […]
Song of the Day 4/16: Toronto, “Your Daddy Don’t Know”
Protectionism has a bad name among economists, but as with most things, in some circumstances it’s absolutely the right thing for a country to do if it wants to grow a particular industry. For Canada in the early days of rock music, the danger was the domination of the its music industry and airwaves by […]
Song of the Day 4/15: Ludovico Einaudi, “Due Tramonti (Two Sunsets)”
Oscar season is upon us — the ceremony takes place April 25 — and it will be a major shock if “Nomadland” isn’t named best picture. Everything about the film stands out amid Hollywood’s mass-produced dreck, including its soundtrack, mostly taken from Italian pianist-composer Ludovico Einaudi’s seven-album collection “Seven Days Walking.” Director Chloé Zhao, who […]
Song of the Day 4/13: Less Than Jake, “The State of Florida”
As pop-punk band Less Than Jake noted in this 2008 song, Florida is sinking into the sea. I would note that the process isn’t going fast enough. Unlike, say, Neil Young writing about Southern men, LTJ’s critique came from inside — the band’s album “GNV FLA,” released in 2008, is named for their hometown, Gainesville. […]
Song of the Day 4/12: Sinéad O’Connor, “Black Boys on Mopeds”
The continuing plague of police brutality against Black men has kept this song relevant more than 30 years after its release. Colin Roach was a 21-year-old Black man living in the London borough of Hackney in 1983, when police tried to pull him over, apparently thinking the moped he was driving was stolen. Hackney, a […]
El Somnambulo Reviews Wrestlemania 37: Night 2
The hot rumor making the rounds is that Becky Lynch will return tonight, likely in a truck, following her being away for almost a year away as she became a mom. Looks like there’s a ready-made feud with Bayley awaiting her. Tonight’s ‘celebrity’ is Logan Paul. Yet another media creation who is ‘famous for being […]
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