There is no such thing as old music. Regardless of when a piece was composed, it comes to life only at the moment when someone plays or sings it. Music only exists as sound, even…
Posts tagged as “essays”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s long time chief, J Edgar Hoover, was in a sense “family” for me. He was a presence, heavy and omniscient, like a bad uncle. In the 1920s, during the infamous…
In my youth, many if not most budding musicians had to fight their way through a lot of opposition, such as parents or other authority figures urging them to stop this nonsense and get a…
“If we weren’t still hiring great people and pushing ahead at full speed, it would be easy to fall behind and become a mediocre company.” — Bill Gates In 1983, as the trajectory of my…
Udo died in the autumn of 1991. He’d been driving alone late at night, so no one ever knew exactly why or how his car wound up at the bottom of a ravine. The best,…
As a kid I listened on the radio to “The FBI in Peace and War.” My parents had listened during the mid 1930s to “G-Men.” FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover helped produce those programs and,…
How many musicians can really be seen as revolutionaries — in not just musical terms but political ones as well? Fela Kuti is one such figure, and Americans are finally learning about him. The award-winning…
The French are for the millionaire. The Americans are for the maid. Among the French, three out of five think the IMF’s former managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been framed. (Strauss-Kahn tendered his resignation as…
I met with Muriel at the Redwood Drive-In a week or so ago and we sat and drank coffee as she shared her story with me. For those who don’t know, she is Terry Ryder’s…