When a writing class reveals certain truths — The four of us — my wife, me, my best friend and his husband — share Japanese deviled eggs, smoky bourbons, curry, and ramen. I don’t remember the street or the name of this place, though it’s on Manhattan’s upper east side. We tell stories of work — of privilege…

Remembering certain pledges — Politics and music have always co-existed, and sometimes the bed they sleep in has sagged or even broken. I remember when President Ronald Reagan co-opted Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” as if Ronnie would ever listen to, much less understand, that anthem of the working people and how nothing really…

The bar, not the lunatic fringe group — Last night as I was still processing yet another mass shooting at a public venue, my wife and I spoke about fear. “It’s all this fear of things we don’t understand,” she said. And while I agreed with her essentially, I nevertheless wondered why it’s so fucking complicated to understand…

A mixed love story — When I’m a little boy home with the flu, my mother treats me with Campbell’s chicken noodle soup; sometimes it’s chicken with rice. In Birmingham, 1963, when I’m seven years old, a bomb goes off in a downtown Baptist church, killing four. No one I know says much at all…

Clean those erasers — I am not a particularly clean person. I am one of those people who through the pandemic didn’t wash his hands often enough and when he did, did NOT soak them in warm water for at least thirty seconds. And I finally got a mild case of Covid recently, even…

Crossover Country 1965 proves difficult to rate — Some of us, or let me just say I assumed that the #1 song of 1965 according to Billboard Magazine’s Hot 100 would have to be a Beatles song. I’m not precise enough to have guessed which one, but I would have never believed that it would take seven notches…

Let’s be honest here — Currently I’m reading former Lush and current Piroshka singer/guitarist Miki Berenyi’s music memoir, Fingers Crossed (NineEight Books 2022). I will confess to never knowing anything about Lush, who combatted the BritPop wave of 1990’s western music with rawer indie sounds. Truth be known, I’ve also come very late to the…

A refuge from insanity — Between hearing crazier antics from George Santos, reading of more declassified documents found in President Biden’s environs, and, of course, being bombarded by the completely un-traumatic mass shootings that dot America’s landscape much as See Rock City signs used to haunt the old barns and trestles on every scenic highway…

Crossover Country in 1972 — There are no anomalies in AM Hit Radio, circa my youth (1962–75). There are, however, many jarring juxtapositions. Like the position of two songs on the year-end Hot 100 Billboard charts for 1972. The # 75 song for that year was Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out.” Think what you want about…