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Tag Archives: The Beatles
“That incident ruined my reputation for 10 years. Get one Beatle drunk and look what happens!” — Harry Nilsson
My introduction, as shallow as this may seem, was through Reservoir Dogs. “You put the lime in the coconut”, etc. My brother said to me, “It’s a stupid song, and you think it’s just a gimmick or a novelty song, … Continue reading
“Listen, I never meant to make money. I never wanted it. I’m a singer, man.” — Gene Vincent
The problem with Elvis is like the problem of, say, the sun. The sun blots out stars. The sun creates heat waves. The sun is a good thing but there’s a hell of a lot else going on besides the … Continue reading
Posted in Music, On This Day
Tagged Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochran, Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent, The Beatles
4 Comments
2025 Books Read
I ended last year with a flurry of Oscar Wilde’s short stories, declaring I’d read all the plays in 2025. I mean, there were only five, sadly, due to the homophobic violence of his own society. I know these plays … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Austria, books read, Charles Lamb, children's books, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Czeslaw Milosz, David Lynch, Dubravka Ugrešić, England, essays, fiction, France, Frankenstein, Germany, Guillermo del Toro, Hungary, Ireland, Jane Austen, Janet Malcolm, John Keats, Lord Byron, Mark Danielewski, Mary Gaitskill, Mary Shelley, Matthew Arnold, Memoirs, nonfiction, Oscar Wilde, poetry, Poland, politics, Rebecca West, Roald Dahl, Robert Kaplan, Robert Louis Stevenson, Russia, sci-fi, Scotland, scripts, Spain, The Beatles, Twin Peaks, William Shakespeare, Yugoslavia
12 Comments
“Here I was, stuck in the middle of a dying nation with all these funny looking children who didn’t even realize the world was coming to an end, and now on top of everything else they expected me to turn my room into a hippie crash pad!” — Lester Bangs
It’s his birthday today. A lot of ink has been spilled on Lester Bangs, including on this site. My feelings for him are as chaotic as his writing style. There are times I read him and I think, almost wildly, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Music, On This Day, writers
Tagged David Bowie, essays, Lester Bangs, nonfiction, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones
6 Comments
“Blues is a tonic for whatever ails you.” — B.B. King
I love Langston Hughes’ description of the blues: “The mood of the Blues is almost always despondency, but when they are sung people laugh.” WHAT a performance. And WHAT an audience. The mood – the back and forth – the … Continue reading
Posted in Music, On This Day
Tagged B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Elvis Presley, Howlin' Wolf, Little Richard, Merle Haggard, Robert Johnson, Sam Phillips, Sun Records, The Beatles, Willie Nelson
6 Comments
May 2025 Snapshots
The biggest news of the month is that my book is available for pre-order. It’s about Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (no release date yet for the film, but it will be this fall). I interviewed everyone, from Guillermo himself, to … Continue reading
Posted in Personal
Tagged family, Frankenstein, friends, Guillermo del Toro, Ireland, Robert Kaplan, snapshots, The Beatles
11 Comments
Music shuffle: The Return
To quote the final line of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: I been away a long time. My last “shuffle” post was in 2022 and I worried about what I would do when “my laptop goes”. Well, it happened … Continue reading
Posted in Music
Tagged Bleu, Brendan Benson, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, Eminem, Eric Church, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Iran, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Link Wray, Mike Viola, Nirvana, Pat McCurdy, shuffle, The Beatles, Tracy Bonham, Waylon Jennings
16 Comments
2022 Books Read
Some re-reads this year, but a lot of new-to-me authors as well. New novels written by faves. Been a year of upheaval and transitions. I’ve managed to keep up my regular reading schedule. I just don’t feel right if I’m … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Alfred Hitchcock, Anne Fadiman, art, Australia, Biography, books read, Canada, Christopher Hitchens, Edmund Burke, Elinor Lipman, England, entertainment biography, essays, Eve Babitz, friends, Germany, Greece, Hitler, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Janet Malcolm, Joan Didion, Joseph Cornell, Lorrie Moore, Machiavelli, Master and Margarita, Memoirs, Michael Curtiz, Mikhail Bulgakov, Mitford sisters, nonfiction, Paul Zindel, politics, Quentin Tarantino, Robert De Niro, Russia, Ryszard Kapuściński, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Beatles, Tom Wolfe, true crime, Victor Klemperer, Victor Serge, war, William Hazlitt, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, WWII, YA fiction
10 Comments
Dynamic Duo #32
Paul McCartney and John Lennon, writing “I Saw Her Standing There” together, Nov. 1962, at the McCartney home in Liverpool. Taken by Paul’s brother Mike.