Ears & Whiskers...

Music

Playlist: 11/27

The Week In Rapid Rotation

November 28th, 2011 · No Comments

REINCARNATION OF A LOVE BIRD, Paul Motian and the Electric Bebop Band ; JMT, recorded June 1994. Motian had a way of layering his sound against the ring of electric guitars and for a while in the ’90s had bands that doubled up on them and saxophones (see Garden of Eden,…

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Books

Independents Or…

Why the death of independent books stores is a personal tragedy.

November 16th, 2011 · No Comments

The story today in The New York Times about the birth –rather than the death– of an independent bookstore is cause for celebration. Novelist Ann Patchett, joining with much of Nashville’s reading community, has spurred the opening of Parnassus Books after the closing of the city’s  Davis-Kidd bookstore last December. It was…

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Comics

Death of Comics Reboot

DC rebirth, movies are better, Chris Ware stinks. UPDATED

August 31st, 2011 · No Comments

Take aways from the publicity surrounding the “reboot” of DC’s line of comics:

– Starting over as issue #1 means not being bound by previous story line.  So maybe Lois and Clark aren’t married. Now what? “Part of the nature of culture is that we retell stories that are meaningful to…

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Poetry

Philip Levine – Poet Laureate

Working man's poet mines memory, makes music of American experience.

August 10th, 2011 · No Comments

Welcome news today that Philip Levine has been appointed Poet Laureate of the United States. I enjoyed Levine’s 2010 collection News of the World with its recycled memories and working class tales as well as its plain-spoken language , something often required of American poets; see Ted Kooser but, not so much,…

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