Normally around this time, I would be mining through a year’s worth of concerts in search of what I consider to be the purest gems of the bunch, but, instead, I’m peering out the window at a minacious sky that is emblematic of just how unforgiving 2020 has been. Western New York had shows with … Continue reading The Year the Earth Stood Still: A to Z of 2020
Winter Break is upon us and, if your family is anything like ours, things can get dicey whenever everyone sits down to watch a movie at the same time. A unanimous selection seldom occurs and one person or more usually choose bed rather than continue to stump for their candidate long into the night. At … Continue reading The Great Pixar Debate
When I started writing about movies for a weekly newspaper back in 2006, the world was very different. Myspace was the largest social networking site in the world, Twitter was in its infancy, and Netflix was still mailing out DVDs with varying degrees of playability as its primary form of customer interaction. Now, Zuckerberg is … Continue reading Once Upon a Stream: The Best Films of 2020
COVID-19 has made it so that most of us in the United States are unlikely to be under a Mediterranean sky anytime soon, but guitarist/songwriter Steve Hackett has crafted a resplendent, mood-driven collection of acoustic travel tunes aimed at holding us over until we get there. All 11 tracks are inspired by Hackett’s extensive journey … Continue reading Steve Hackett takes you ‘Under a Mediterranean Sky’ on Jan. 22
If Willie Hutch was right and you can’t miss something that you never had, then the lack of social interaction during the cultural clusterfuck known as 2020 hasn’t affected my life all that much. I write a lot, I haven’t had a consistent circle of friends in 15 years, and I spend the majority of … Continue reading 2020: Live From Your Living Room
The unexpected upside of not having set foot inside of a live music venue for eight months has been rediscovering records that I had fallen out of touch with over the years. Sure, plenty of artists have chosen to release new music during the pandemic, but there’s something exhilarating about getting reacquainted with an album … Continue reading Guitarist Martin Barre on COVID and 50 Years of Jethro Tull
“Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back.” – Bruce Springsteen, “Atlantic City” (1982) In her 1963 book, “Not Quite Posthumous Letter to My Daughter,” author Caitlin Thomas set out to write a manifesto in which every morsel of matriarchal wisdom that her 50-year-old self had accumulated up to that point … Continue reading Grief In the Time of COVID
Calling a funeral home at 3:30 a.m. to arrange the cremation of your 17-week-old daughter is something that no human being should ever have to do, but I did it, and I’m still here. Despite feeling as if I’ll never be the same again, I’ve soldiered on in the face of inscrutable tragedy to reach … Continue reading The Fab 50
“Race and racism continue to be important factors in American life, but we should not reduce every problem facing people of color to race and racism. That’s just part of the overall problem.” – William Julius Wilson Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson popularized the term “White Flight” in the mid-20th century as a way to … Continue reading We’re all stars now in the dope show
Joe Louis Walker has seen some shit. He made a name for himself within the Bay Area music scene when he was just 16-years-old and played alongside luminaries such as John Lee Hooker, Buddy Miles, and Muddy Waters, so, when he speaks his piece on how COVID-19 has decimated the industry, he knows what he’s … Continue reading Blues Comin’ Down: A conversation with legendary Bay Area bluesman Joe Louis Walker
