Category: On this date

25 years of the Drive-By Truckers

The Drive-By Truckers are a great band. I first heard their music in 2003 with the release of Decoration Day. It’s still my favorite of their albums. Later that year, I saw them give an amazing show at Fletcher’s, a small bar in Baltimore. They played for over two and a half hours and the show was even more impressive than the album. The DBT were loud with funny, compassionate and intelligent lyrics. The used three guitars, similar to the approach of the earlier Southern rock band, Lynyrd Skynyrd.

I think of their first two albums Gangstabilly (1998) and Pizza Deliverance (1999) together. These are their juvenlia. The songs are fun but nowhere near as mature as their later work. I’m going to post YouTube videos of songs from those albums.

R.E.M. – Fables of the Reconstruction

This is the first R.E.M. Disc that I bought.

Film: Seijun Suzuki

Seijun Suzuki was a great film director. His unconventional films are well worth seeing.

The Criterion Collection has released some great Blu-ray and DVD discs of his films. Eight are currently on the Criterion Channel.

John Prine remembered one year after his death

John Prine died on April 7, 2020. I was fortunate enough to see him perform several times. I saw him at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in the early 1970s and remember that he sang “Please Don’t Bury Me” and “The Accident” before they were released on Sweet Revenge in 1973. I saw him at the Academy of Music around 1976 with Steve Goodman. They both performed solo with acoustic guitars and did the encore together. The last time I saw him was at Pier Six in Baltimore in 2011.

If you don’t know Prine, I would start with his first album John Prine from 1971. It has many of his best songs such as “Angel from Montgomery”, “Sam Stone” and Hello in There”. What a great singer and songwriter.

A Yankees player had a spaghetti-eating contest with an ostrich

Twitter is very educational. I never knew about this. It was 102 years ago yesterday.

Monster (R.E.M. album)

Monster (1994) is a great album. Peter Buck’s loud electric guitar replaces the delicate folk-rock sound of their prior albums. A deluxe version was released in 2020.

‘Monster’: How R.E.M. Unleashed Their Inner Rock’n’Roll Beast

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin was great. When she had her first big hit with “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)”, white rock fans like me had never heard anything like it. I got to see her perform at Artscape in Baltimore.

National Cheesesteak Day 03/24/21

Yesterday was National Cheesesteak Day. This video explains the history of the cheesesteak which was invented in Philadelphia.

National Cheesesteak Day — March 24