being not doing

I woke up this morning with an REO Speedwagon song in my head. Not just any REO Speedwagon song, but the absolute best one, the one I always attribute to Chicago, since Chicago was my favorite band at age 9 and I therefore think that all great 80s rock ballads are by them. […]

The phones are small and in your pockets. The music is beamed to your car from outer space. Sure, not all the music, but the music on XM radio is, which is kind of weird and fun at the same time. Not that we normally have XM radio, because we normally don’t […]

‘When the puppets cut their strings / there’ll be fireworks for the world to see / when the puppets cut their strings / there’ll be hell to pay in the ghettos of the whole damn world.’ — Icemakers of the Revolution
Diane, Tammy, and Shawny, at a show outside the Union in 1991.
I’ve referenced the Icemakers […]

Lately PJ, a friend of mine from college, has been rockin the local scene with DC Upset the Setup gear. Whenever I see the stickers on utility boxes around the city I am reminded both of him and of the music of my youth, ‘Kiss Me, Son of God’ and ‘Upset the Setup’ going […]

In honor of the possibility that I may be hosting someone I’ve known for over two decades and his band, I alphabetized our CDs.
Yes, we’ve lived in this house for over a year, and yes, they were alphabetized at the previous house. So, no, there’s really no excuse for why they haven’t […]

This week we saw the Washington National Opera’s performance of Wagner’s Die Walküre at the Kennedy Center. Or, I should say, we saw most of the production. Despite our best efforts, Wagner defeated us.
Last year, we saw our first Wagner production, Parsifal performed by the Kirov Opera Company, also at the […]

Beginning only a day or two after November’s national election, I started to have songs recur on my wee shuffle that I hardly listened to at all before then. Each and every one of them imprinted itself on my brain complete with an image connecting it with the incoming Congress, and I haven’t been […]

One of my gifts this year was Mental Jewelry on cd. The band, Live, is one of my favorite bands, largely on the strength of this first album. I have a weakness for debut albums, believing they represent an artist’s hopes and dreams that they’ve been tweaking and polishing for years […]