It’s been a little while since I did one of these. Of course, it’s november, so there’s very little blogging going on at all, thanks to the whole novel-writing experiments and general life stuff. Of course, I’m still doing the up and back to DC thing for work, and last week, coming home took me […]

Took the opportunity in the last week to swap some new discs into my car box, ushering in a new population to revisit and review. Some good stuff here, again, largely a cross-section of the 90s, when I was a loyal member of the BMG record club and bought lots of things I might not […]

For this, the twentieth(!) edition of this little series of mine, I take on a couple of punk-inspired records and the entire bill of the last concert I attended. Enjoy, or not. Doesn’t bother me any. ♦The Ramones – Halfway to Sanity: I remember the Ramones always being there in the deep background growing up […]

A couple of visits to the Lone Star State this time around, representing my slightly less-awkward alt-country phase, a latter day disc from a new favorite, and an underappreciated aberration from a vast, critically praised catalog that I still quite like a lot. Enough explanation? ♦- Dixie Chicks – Taking The Long Way: This record […]

This edition hit some interesting notes – two of these records, it turns out, end up defining particular eras in my lifetime, even if I didn’t realize it. The others are just really cool records. Also, I this is another one of those mixes where I’ve all the artists live a lot, which to me […]

♦ Bret Alexander – Gentleman East: In a lot of ways, this one is probably the best of the half-dozen or so Badlees side projects that came out during the great post-UTDH hiatus, even if it’s not my favorite (that would probably be Perfect Smile). The foundation of what makes(made?) the Badlees great was the […]

I wrote this one in fits and starts during the last couple of weeks. Little bits at a time, mostly, because I’ve been under a lot of pressure and stress, and I worked in a couple of audiobooks for the really long drives. Still, I hit on some good selections, including a cross-section of the […]

There are several Greatest Hits packages in this edition; quickie releases designed to quickly get new fans up to speed or replace aging cassette tapes, or just to make money to pay off a divorce settlement or wring the last bit of blood from the stone after the band calls it quits. They have their […]

This week, we talk about a handful of other records pulled out of my big box. I guess if there’s something approaching a theme to be drawn from this batch, it’s the presence of hidden lore behind a record that makes it what it is. I almost threw in a review of the newish Wailin’ […]

This weekend brings a new box of CDs to the car, and thus, a new edition of this particular series, in which I examine my somewhat questionable musical taste, as expressed via the great variety of compact discs I’ve accumulated over the course of my life. If anything, this little project of mine shows that […]