Just seeing if I can catch your attention with this headline--seems like it's been ages since I've blogged. The title refers to those Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln books that big mouthed Bill authors. I almost want to keep an open mind and read O'Reilly's take on American History, but...would you?
We are nearing July 1st in my home state since 1993, Washington, and the county plastic bag ban is about to go into effect. Recreational pot is legal, plastic bags are not. Reminds me of ten years ago when someone blogged how much the world has changed--that (then) the greatest rapper (Eminem) was white and the greatest golfer (Tiger Woods) was black.....Dennis McDougal has written Bob Dylan: The Biography (Turner Publishing, 2014) and he stole a line from me! Well, probably not, but I've been saying, "In Bob we trust" for years on the radio, and here it is, in print. I suppose you could say the same about those other Bobs, Wills or Marley. Meanwhile, McDougal needs to correctly spell Stevie Ray Vaughan's surname in the next printing.
If I ever get in a band again--it's been six years since I've played drums in a show and I really miss it--how about Ex-Trollops for a moniker? Well, it's better some of the other names my bands have used (Anyway, Possession, the Hush). I liked the last name my pals Tony, Bill, Chris & I came up with, the Distractions, but it turns out that lots of other bands used that name. If only we could have used a search engine back in the 1980s to check on that.
Inducting Linda Ronstadt into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame recently, Glenn Frey talked about playing in Ronstadt's band before his own taste of fame. Said Frey, "We were working on a style of music none of us had ever heard before. Two years later, people called it country rock." Come on, Glenn! Rick Nelson, the Byrds (who were heading in a country direction even before Gram Parsons was added to their lineup), and probably some hippies in Austin (say, Shiva's Headband) were there long before you, pal. Some of those Eagles sure think highly of themselves.....Can't figure out why people walk around like zombies downtown checking their texts and the net while moving in slow motion. Doesn't the stimulation of being in a town or city matter more? Or being alert? Playing music through headphones makes more sense than this frozen state.
How busy is the library I work in? It's number two in the system of 27 Timberland branches, and I'll describe it this way: sometimes the aisle I need to work in has a person or persons in it, so I'll use another, and then another, and then another, to go around them.....A sobering thought: I overheard a caretaker at the library talking to the person she's responsible for--a woman in a wheelchair. Caretaker: "I wouldn't leave and forget about you." Woman in wheelchair: "Yes, you would."
Finally, I've avoided reviewing Mark Lewisohn's epic bio, The Beatles: All These Years, Vol. 1--Tune In (Crown Archetype, 2013) because I've covered so many others. Lewisohn has done more research on the Fabs than anyone else, partially because he has annotated their reissues and compilations, etc. The great flaw of the book (only the first of three books has been issued, 900+ pages, ending in 1962), as you can imagine, is the overkill of the incredible details. I swear, Lewisohn can tell you the exact amount of steps one of the Beatles needed in order to catch a bus from their home. But there is lots of new information I hadn't heard before, and my favorite bit comes from December 1958, where John, notoriously blind as a bat, relayed to Paul about something he saw when leaving Forthlin Road late one night without his glasses. John told Paul that he saw on Mather Avenue "some mad people sitting on their front porch, playing cards at one o'clock in the bloody morning." The next time Paul went past, "he looked for himself, and it was an illuminated nativity scene."