Or a glimpse into post-entertainment society (it's not pretty)

Or how my views on culture proved to be all wet

A few minutes after yesterday’s post I learned the sad news about Christine McVie. So the request I had just made for well…requests... became a bit moot. It appears a lot of us had the same thought. I promise I’ll pick something else from the request pile in the future. But for now, since I couldn’t decide on which song to pay tribute to Christine with, I’m including a few.

An ode to a magical, partly fictional Lou Reed

At the airport pasting a picture

The Geometry Blinked Ruin Unimaginable

My longest running bandmate, Jon Rauhouse, has been told he is no longer terminal with cancer. Jon hates to admit it, but he has a very positive core. In fact, he is one of the best humans I have ever known. He and Jen are my chosen family. Even hopped up on steroids he is magnificent.

There is nothing like a road trip during golden hour. I just drove to and from Toronto via rural Vermont, Quebec and Ontario on the lip of Lake Ontario. There were dramatic, dense clouds in rainbow charcoal on the way there, and a brittle amber sugar scrim over-lighting the sky on the way home made more dramatic by a huge, nearly full moon. It watched me from just above the thick industrial hydro power lines that serve Montreal in a surrealist fashion, the invasive, omnipresent pampas grass pink and waving. I saw more hawks in three days than I’ve seen in the last three years combined. They are trying to tell me something. The vultures are back for the year and they were everywhere. They brought me comfort.

Hello, from the other side

Subtitles, anyone?

There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things; it presides everywhere, often in the places we least expect. - John O’Donohue I went to the woods with my two dogs yesterday. I had been feeling the weight of troubled times. I don’t think I’m alone in sensing the dark shadows of unkindness framing the world like an old style vignetted photo. I go …

Lately I’ve been reading The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig. This is in the publisher’s description, “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a compendium of new words for emotions. Its mission is to shine a light on the fundamental strangeness of being a human being.”

And I recorded it. Here's "Sailor's Song."

❤️❤️❤️

Why I can't let go of "Into The Wild", and why perhaps you can't, either.

Paid subscribers only

1997-03-31, Memorial Stadium, St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada

1997-04-10, U of Southern Maine, Portland, ME

a.k.a. Having spent 2023 doubling down on the ridiculousness of 2022, the genre currently sits in a rather uninspiring place.

a.k.a. An in-depth look at the latest wave of jumpstyle, plus a round-up of the latest electronic music news and a fresh bundle of new track recommendations.

Two and a half years after the release of Glow On, Brendan Yates reflects on an intense period of change, adaptation, and growth—all while protecting his sensitivity against the harsh glare.

Despite getting older, many of us still find ourselves in a constant dialogue with our most idealistic hardcore teenage selves. Frank Turner turned these dialogues into an album that needed to exist.

It’s official. We are in the studio

The demo for a new song that I wrote for my wife’s 40th birthday party

I am posting this because people have asked me to. Emily Rose Marcus was born on December 10, 1969, in Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley. It was a forceps delivery, and she came out with bruises on her face, yet she lived her life as a woman who prized beauty—in fashion, her own sense of style, furniture, art. Following her beloved uncle Dr. William E. Bernstein, she chose a death with dignity, and died on January 31, 2023, in her apartment in Oakland, where she had lived since 2007, after more than two years fighting against a terminal diagnosis of appendiceal cancer she had received in September 2020. Our hearts are broken.

I always liked the picture on the back of the Mr. Tambourine Man LP of Dylan playing with the Byrds. Googling it, I understand that he joined them for an encore at Ciro's on Sunset Strip. Have you ever heard this? Do you know if a recording exists? I would kill to hear it. —J DEVON

26 February, 2021.

Good morning, Welcome to your weekly Recommender fix! Is it too early for an exclamation mark? Depends what time you open this email. But we’re not apologising. No looking back. Here’s another one! Whoa, that one was too far. Let’s crack on, we have music to recommend and Odetta Hartman has a children’s album to tell you about, there’s no time to listen to you whining about an exclamation mark, here have a playlist:

Listen to Roger Nichols's long-awaited "Second Arrangement" cassette

Chart a course for the smoothest soul of the '70s and '80s.

Good morning. Today we’re listening to Arvo Pärt, an Estonian composer. Pärt grew up in northern Estonia, began to compose music in his early teens, and studied composition at the Tallinn Conservatory.

Good morning. It’s Friday so we’re listening to something more upbeat. Today we’re listening to Bond, a British/Australian electric string quartet. The group – originally Haylie Ecker (violin), Eos Counsell (violin), Tania Davis (viola), and Gay-Yee Westerhoff (cello) – formed in 2000.

In celebration of Controllerise playing Transformers this week at the Vibe session. We're doing our first sample flip challenge. Here's how you can get down. 1.Grab the Sample file for free by clicking Sample flip button below.

Sidechain weekly nerdery

The super polished super angry super sad super super new Olivia Rodrigo record GUTS.

ChappellChella, SabrinaChella, LanaChella, DojaChella, Tylerchella, and, of course, Taychella. TOO MANY GOD DAMN 'CHELLAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On Weathervanes, death, love and listening like a mother

She's even more than a single mom who works two jobs, loves her kids and never stops!

At the US Open, Cécile McLorin Salvant sang of an America to believe in

Trophies and takeaways at the Deutscher Jazzpreis

The spiritual captain of the Outlaw Country Cruise went out in a blaze of raucous glory

Back in the '40s it was Elm Grove Lodge, where the Wright brothers did wrong

My favorite albums of the year—unpaywalled!—by Laurel Halo, ML Buch, Lucy Railton, and more

Ambient dream pop, hazed-out cumbia, microtonal pump organ, and more

so far it doesn't hurt

Covers

Welcome to the jungle. We’ve got Catan. On Skateboarding I have given up on street skating. In the words of my friend Richard, a plate glass specialist who spent most of last summer on a two-story scaffolding rig in my backyard, "I don't bounce anymore." There will be no more ledges and no more grassy gaps between parking lots. Definitely no more kickflip…

Hello from the road 👋🏻

Do you have a family history, Charles? “Well, doesn’t everybody?” I woke to the doctor in my face. She was asking me questions. Along the lines of, “Have you lost any weight recently?” I wanted to say, “As a matter fact I have. Thank you for noticing.” But just muttered a “Yeah, I guess . . .”

Let me throw a fat high five to my new subscribers (paid and free!). If you like what I’m cooking here, why not forward this to a friend and/or promote it by going around your neighborhood knocking on doors? Unless that’s something you’re not quite comfortable with, of course. Either way, no matter. We’re happy to have you.