Robby on May 26 2008 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Music, Robby's Page
Previously posted on last.fm, now with political addendum at the end.
The concept of the price of fame is usually applied in the sense of the personal cost to the famous, from the relatively mild annoyance of not being able to go out without being recognized, to the deep existential crises and insanity of megastars like [...]
Lance on May 02 2008 | Filed under: Culture, Lance's Page, Music, Robby's Page
Robby and I got back to our roots a few weeks ago, garage band roots that is. We went to see the Fleshtones. Robby shared his thoughts over at Last Fm. I figure they belong here as well. First, my verdict. Maybe the most fun band ever live. Yeah, click the links, go listen to [...]
Robby on Feb 13 2008 | Filed under: Music, Robby's Page
Love letter, 1982-1985.
In between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, a section of I-10 stretches out as a low, dead straight bridge across 25 miles of swamp. This is the story of how I came to be hauling ass across that long, low bridge at 120 mph (still and forever the fastest I have ever driven [...]
Robby on Jan 21 2008 | Filed under: Great Lyrics Series, Music, Robby's Page
To love a song, it’s not important that you understand the words. And I say that as a onetime lyricist and singer. As one of my guitarists often reminded me, “the words don’t matter.” Well, yeah they do, but not as much as lyricists like to think. For example, I enjoy Elvis Costello’s lyrics tremendously, [...]
Robby on Mar 12 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Louisiana Politics, Race, Robby's Page
The subtext of this Salon piece? People in Louisiana sure are stupid. Because everything that went wrong after Katrina was Bush’s fault, and yet the state is growing more staunchly Republican.
I’m going to just leave the “it’s all Bush’s fault” meme alone, except to express astonishment that anyone could make such an argument or have [...]
Robby on Mar 08 2007 | Filed under: Music, Robby's Page
I am loving my new discovery Jason Forrest (his myspace here and his main site here[some pages NSFW]). Well, I didn’t really discover him. I mean, other people were already there, and since I do not have a technological advantage over them (quite the opposite, probably), colonization is out of the question.
addthis_url [...]
Robby on Mar 08 2007 | Filed under: Culture, Humor, Music, Robby's Page
People who love music sometimes identify a little too closely with the musicians/songs they love, to the point that any criticism of those musicians/songs becomes, in the music lover’s mind, a personal attack. That’s true even if the music lover himself had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of the music, which is usually [...]
Robby on Mar 04 2007 | Filed under: Culture, Great Lyrics Series, Music, Robby's Page
(Lance’s listening notes: I just spent the evening with my wife and a friend at a little bar, in a very little town, Fordoche Louisiana, called the Red Monkey. I loaded up the Juke box with what interested me (no The Jam, Clash or Pixies) which ended up being The Band, Van Morrison, Creedence and [...]
Robby on Feb 09 2007 | Filed under: Lance's Page, Music, Robby's Page, Uncategorized
Note: Google, and thus YouTube, is down. So the video is unavailable at the moment. Please check back later. The entire online world seems to be suffering from rolling outages right now. I don’t know why.
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I love good covers; always have. There’s something about hearing a familiar song in a new context that can make [...]
Robby on Jan 03 2007 | Filed under: Culture, Lance's Page, Music, Robby's Page, Uncategorized
How deeply, unfathomably weird the 70s were. Roughly contemporaneously at mid-decade, top 40 radio hitspace included an existential dirge, a sea chantey, a heavy metal love song about death, and a chorusless rock opera. I’m not even mentioning any novelty songs; if you’re looking for the mainstream, these songs were it.
Placed in the context [...]
Robby on Dec 17 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Lance's Page, Music, Robby's Page
Dr. John’s “Walk on Gilded Splinters” has been covered by a slew of artists from Humble Pie to Paul Weller, but the Dirty Dozen Brass Band’s version is the spiciest. The tight horn arrangement, underpinned by a rumbling tuba, is as dense and visceral as a thrash metal chord progression, and John Bell’s growling vocal [...]
Lance on Dec 14 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Lance's Page, Music, Robby's Page
Black Foliage, by Olivia Tremor Control, is Sergeant Pepper’s as a cheap but astonishingly well-crafted home recording, proving the concept that such multilayered sonic frippery can be accomplished by virtually anyone now that recording equipment and professional editing software are so inexpensive. As ever, not just anyone can write such great songs (”California Demise Pt. [...]
Lance on Dec 14 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Lance's Page, Music, Robby's Page, Uncategorized
When I first started this little project, before I even knew Omar, Michael and Keith as anything but annoying commenters at QandO (okay, that is a cheap shot at my co-bloggers, but I have it on good authority that I am one of the most annoying commenters at QandO, so I consider them in good [...]
Robby on Nov 08 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Great Lyrics Series, Humor, Media, Music, Robby's Page
When I decided to start writing about rock lyrics, I promised myself I wasn’t going to talk about the Beatles or Bob Dylan, because forests have already been harvested to provide the paper for musings on their lyrics, and I don’t really have anything further to add. At least not without breaking out some Marxist/feminist/Lacanian [...]
Robby on Sep 22 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Great Lyrics Series, Music, Robby's Page, Uncategorized
Theology and moral codes tell us to be good, in conflict with our natural desires and appetites, which tell us the opposite: be bad! Take what you want! Look out for #1! Socializing ourselves to develop a sense of empathy–that is, an emotionally-based understanding for how our actions affect others–is crucial for the development of [...]
Robby on Aug 14 2006 | Filed under: Culture, Great Lyrics Series, Music, Robby's Page
(Second installment in the Great Lyrics Series)
I agree with Paul McCartney. There is nothing wrong with a silly love song, a perfectly useful thing to have around. A love song amplifies the feeling when you are in love and sweetly intensifies the ache when you aren’t and want to be. That can be true no [...]
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