He is an old man, and on first inspection he seems like the kind of old man…
I go along
like everything is regular
like everything is run of the mill
but snapping awake
or being the last to lock up
or the wind in the trees
Editor’s Note: This review first appeared May 13, 2011.
My knowledge of Nottingham, UK, extends to the Robin Hood movies I grew up watching as a kid courtesy of WGN Family Classics (featuring Douglas Fairbanks) and Disney (with a cartoon fox). I don’t know much of its music scene, yet I’ve been obsessing lately over instrumental recordings from a pair of bands that hail from there — Kogumaza and Souvaris.
With all the yap-yap and chatter by the talking pixels of the 24/7 cable news/internet, my brain needs a break. I don’t always have the attention span for listening to songs. What I particularly enjoy about a well done instrumental is the freedom it allows me to imagine. No whiny, sappy, heartbroken, political or obtuse lyrics to badly date an era. Just get right to the good stuff.
Kogumaza is a trio that create a dense, cinematic experience on their self-titled release that just came out this week. The two-track download plays like an LP (if you don’t actually buy the vinyl). Each side features a four-piece suite of ambient, hypnotically droning, reverberating guitars; fuzzed out bass and drums cleverly stitched together. The approach is simple and well-crafted, never proggy or flashy.
He did not own much, nor did he care to. His life was what he thought suited…
Editor’s Note: This drink first appeared November 11, 2010.
Here’s another drink, my own. It’s good, y’all.
Cherry Baby
2 oz gin (I recommend Plymouth or Citadel.)
1 oz Cherry Heering
1/2 oz Cynar
1/2 oz lemon juice
2-3 dashes of Peychaud bitters
Luxardo cherry for garnish
Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared November 27, 2011. Coco Robicheaux passed away Friday evening. Much has…
Editor’s Note: This post first appeared February 11, 2011
Describing—let alone defining—the act of death is a fool’s errand. After all, how does one speak of eternity, whether spent in unremembered inky nothingness or fluttering around on angelic wings?
Still, some of us come closer than others in peaking behind the epistemological, spiritual and otherwise cosmological curtain separating the living from the dead. I’ve always liked the term “the sweet hereafter,” even if it’s hard to beat German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who called death “the supreme festival on the road to freedom.” Though a little on the cheery side, it’s important to note that Bonhoeffer did not suffer fools (or evil) gladly, and for his candor on matters ecclesiastical and political was executed by the Nazis at the Flossenburg concentration camp, weeks before its liberation by Allied troops.
Editor’s Note: This poem first appeared December 6, 2010.
married a long time
work takes me on the road
for a few days
and nights
get home
stomp in the house
say, “I am very glad to see you, baby.”
Hi, Folks, Some of your will recall the long series I posted awhile back about a young…
My mother and brother came up to Washington to visit me in the hospital where I was…
The sea is a harsh mistress. She constantly asks you to leave your wife and cries…
Editor’s Note: This post first appeared June 10, 2011.
I love this nationwide wailing and gnashing of teeth about the heat.
I grew up in the Deep South, so I earned my hot-weather badge at an early age. Now the rest of the country is in a sweaty panic because it’s hot in June.
In my Mississippi hometown, there was no such thing as a June heat wave. We had one heat wave every year, and it lasted from May to October.
As long as I wasn’t in school, I could have cared less. It never occurred to me and my friends there were places where melting asphalt was a novelty.
Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared November 17, 2010. Me: “So, Martin Luther posted those 95 things…