Tarkan
I have mentioned Tarkan before on my blog in an early post on Arab Pop. He’s the Elvis Presley (or if you’re too young, think of him as the Justin Timberlake) of Turkey whose hairstyle caused a craze...
View ArticleThe Wonders
There’s something about actors. It seems they all want to be musicians. Some, like Kevin Bacon and Zooey Deschanel form their own bands in search of personal fulfillment. Others, like Oliver Stone,...
View ArticleLatin Hungarians
I’ve never heard of Tatrai Tibor and Szucs Antal Gabor, and you probably haven’t either, but they are Hungarian musicians who play Latin music. Why do they play Latin music? Who knows? At the time this...
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The Be Good Tanyas
I have to say that one of the reasons I like my friend Ruth, with whom I disagree on politics (let’s face it; I disagree with almost everyone on politics), she has excellent taste in music. A month...
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Why Don’t You Do Right?
As usual, I don’t have much time to write today. I was so impressed with Ruth’s suggestion for The Be Good Tanyas that I asked her for more suggestions. She came back with a group called the Carolina...
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Class and Quality in the Bathroom Window
I’ve been working on my first scholarly book on Spenser’s Book of Holinesse in his six book (and still uncompleted) Faerie Queene (I know; how cool am I?). I am going to publish this serious academic...
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Halloween with Mika
It’s Halloween, so I present you with Mika‘s “Lollipop’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6md5RSnVUuo I don’t want to get to technical about the meaning of this song, except to say that it may not be...
View ArticleSublime ‘Santeria’
I found this post on YouTube a couple of weeks ago, and I have been listening to it ever since. It’s by Sublime, and is called ‘Santeria.’ Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEYN5w4T_aM That, of...
View ArticleMohammed Rafi
My friend Gina posted this on FB with the comment that if she ever became a Bollywood star, she would dance like this, to which I replied that it’s a wonder that her head didn’t fall off....
View ArticleAndrea
Okay, I’m done with my ‘authentic’ American music for a while. Now I’m going to travel to Eastern Europe, where they are gradually imitating the individualism of the West without penetrating the...
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Ennio Morricone
So the other day I was talking about my last Leone film, and I got caught up in the film’s score, which was written by my favorite movie scorer, Ennio Morricone. He, of course, scored my favorite...
View ArticleYumi Arai
I’m way behind on my work this week, so here’s a Beach Boys inspired song from Japanese superstar Yumi Arai, aka Yumi Matsutoya. It’s called Rouge no Dengon [“Lipstick Message” in English]:...
View ArticleDr. Dre and Eminem
This week, I was talking about the distinction between critics and artists in my novel Poker Tales. This is one of those things that concerned me when I was an academic. As a literary critic, I thought...
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Handsome Boy Modeling School
Okay, here’s another post on why I find modern art’s lyrical direction so problematical. It has nothing to do with the music or its experimental aspect, both of which I said last week that I enjoy....
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Art Rock Suite
If anybody is interested, here is my favorite parody of the music I grew up listening to in my teens. This was long before Christopher Guest was famous as a member of Spinal Tap, (listed on Amazon as...
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Betty Davis
I obviously have not had a lot of time this year to keep posting regularly, and for that I am sorry. I have been putting the finishing touches on my next book as well as trying to write 201 (or more)...
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Taylor Ware, Yodeling Star
I took the summer off from blogging because I was finishing up a book on a subject you never heard of and didn’t have time to write. During that time I found an article on how blogging was slowing...
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