albums
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Many albums are important to me: the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, Glenn Gould’s 1981 Goldberg Variations, Ornette Coleman’s Science Fiction, Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus, John Coltrane’s Sun Ship, Horace Tapscott’s The Dark Tree, Elgar’s Cello Concerto played by Jacqueline du Pré, and Janet Baker singing Mahler lieder, for example. But, Revolver was vital to me
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In 1987, I was hired by a major scientific journal publisher as a trainee copy editor, not because I knew a damn thing about science, but because I knew that “syphilis” had just the one “l.” Really, I can’t imagine what else they saw in me. I was 26, a library school dropout, somewhat brainy
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Tom Waits: Rain Dogs Twenty-one years ago, I lived in an old polished wooden house that carried a light scent of mildew in its core. It wore the sanded down and lacquered over footprints of hundreds of students, young bewildered energetic folks like me, hungry for freedom, control, booze, and sex, stepping out in to
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Do You Feel the Words Too? My love affair with The Sundays is not deep, but it is lasting. I admit that I don’t know the names of the band members. I admit that I wouldn’t recognize them on the street, and here’s the clincher—I admit that I don’t know every word to any given
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I know what you’re thinking: Who? Eyeless in Gaza? Isn’t that an obscure Aldous Huxley novel? Yes, it is an obscure Huxley novel, but also one of the most underrated synth-pop duos to emerge from England in 1981. I first heard Eyeless in Gaza from my friend Diane, who was my pen pal I met
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Coming Out & Coming Apart Plainsong I can feel the heavy wash of synthesizers vibrating their way out from the scratchy foam headphones of my walkman, even though I haven’t played this album on cassette in over a decade. Seventh grade, the album out for a year. These over-the-top synthesizers are the beginnings of my
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