Singing with Jerome Rothenberg
Dipping into the freaky voices gathered by Jerome Rothenberg for new song lyrics, I found myself in bottomless waters.
By Chris King
Pea Soup with Art Garfunkel
I watched Art Garfunkel smell the diner and think about walking away from it. Then he stood up, put a small pile of money on the table next to a white bowl with what appeared to be the dregs of pea soup, and prepared to walk away.
Fables of the Deconstructions: Carl Marsh reworks R.E.M. songs with Mike Mills, David Mallamud, and SLSO
Mike Mills told Carl Marsh he did not want trite symphonic embellishments of R.E.M. melodies—he wanted new music for orchestra with R.E.M. songs encoded somewhere within them.
Taylor Swift’s Boyfriend is the Reincarnation of My Dead Best Friend
I just listened to “Enchanted.” Taylor Swift did not yet know or love Travis Kelce when she wrote this song, and I have not met the man or wanted to do so, but I can now relate to the lyrics differently as someone who has seen his dead best friend come back to life in another man’s smiling face.
Lost at sea with Richard and Linda Thompson
Harmony Voyages is booking 200 paying guests for the August 2025 Richard Thompson cruise, whereas the Saipan transported nearly 3,000 paid sailors, Marines, and midshipmen like me, along with a squadron of fighting helicopters and big boats to take Marines ashore.
Sympathy for the Prolific Rocker of Harry Arader
If you wish more records sounded like the Moody Blues, Jefferson Starship or John Cale of the early 1970s, you should be listening to Harry Arader. The grooves, chord progressions, harmonic intervals, and guitar licks all would sound at home on album-oriented rock.
Time Shard Passages: Christopher Stark and 48 St. Stephen Premiere New Duet
Not only did 48 St. Stephen pull it off, but they paid Stark the consummate respect of performing their premiere immediately after such a powerful piece of music with so much historical weight. They also were maybe dropping a breadcrumb to mark a path.
Conspiracy Poet in Outer Space
I am among the hopeless and deluded dreamers David Clewell believed in, and so I choose to believe that there is a starship in the sky that touches down and takes away great poets who were perhaps not as widely celebrated on Earth as their work deserved.