Few artists in the pantheon of contemporary music have shaped the American soundscape as much as Miles Davis. Coming to theaters in time for the anniversary of the jazz trumpeter and composer’s death 28-years ago this September is documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson’s much-anticipated Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool. Borrowing its name from Davis’ groundbreaking…
Category: Tunes
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Cure for the Summertime Blues
Who says there’s no cure for the Summertime Blues? I mean besides Eddie Cochran… And, okay, fine, Brian Setzer. Besides those guys — no one. Because there are plenty of cures for the summertime blues. Among my favorite is the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows — a compendium of invented words written by video editor John Koenig.…
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Van Halen’s Drop Dead Legs at 35
Today marks the 35th anniversary of my purchase of Van Halen’s final album with David Lee Roth, 1984. On cassette.I was nearly 12 and freshly loosed into the hothouse of puberty; the psychic gulag of junior high loomed at the terminus of yet another endless summer and Van Halen was a sonic salvo. This was the…