In Memorandum: The Care and Feeding of Emma

My friend and companion of 12 years passed away on December 10th, 2013. Emma was a friendly cat with a quiet temperament and a cute face that could send cat slaves, such as I, into unscheduled trips to the store to find some new and fascinating toy to keep the master happy. With Emma, there was no arguing over money, or fighting over the remote but I must admit, whoever got to the lazy boy rocker first usually had the upper hand. I always knew...

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Upside Down (2013) - Big Budget Flopperoo

Upside Down is a strange movie, even for a Science Fiction Fantasy. Actually, it's quite a silly movie in many ways. However, the special effects that take us to this bizarre universe where two planets are interlocked by what is called duel gravity are quite spectacular at times. Without getting into the complications of the science, suffice it to say that the below planet is where all the poor people live in a dark, hellish nightmare of an...

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Jeff Beck - The Gentle Beck

Jeff Beck is one of the greatest rock and roll guitarists of all time — of that there is no doubt, but there is much more to Beck than plain old rock. Certainly he's rocked with the best of them, from the early days with the Yardbirds, through various versions of The Jeff Beck Group, but his many solo albums also feature some very fine jazz fusion. Beck is also one of the very best sidemen any singer could hope to have accompany them. His solo...

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Life Is Sloppy ....

Unless you're a member of the elite class with unlimited wealth to take care of most every need, life for the rest of us can be very sloppy. I have a feeling the Creator of our Universe (whoever that may be) had a great sense of humour when the great Almighty conceived of a planet that can be very, very hostile to its inhabitants. Let's start with dust. Dust is everywhere, including the coffee you have sitting on your desk next to your computer,...

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TV Review: Detroit 1-8-7 (2010)

Cops shows on TV are a dime a dozen, from the various CSI series to the boy/girl shows such as Castle and Bones. I've never gotten into the CSI shows or Law and Order, assuming that they're all essentially the same basic plot repeated over and over, which is why I avoided similar shows in years gone by, such as Barnaby Jones, Ironside and the original Hawaii 5-0. However, I was a fan of NYPD Blues because of its gritty realism and complicated...

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Classic Movies: Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960)

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, is probably the director's most famous film. It's now hailed as one of his best, however, critics  weren't very thrilled with Hitchcock's venture into the horror genre when the film was released in June 1960. Whether Psycho qualifies as a "horror" film is open to debate, but the film's macabre elements and the violent way in which those elements were presented was regarded as a step down for Hitchcock who, in previous...

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Top Fives - The Best of The Beatles

According to John Lennon, the Beatle who sang lead vocal on a song was usually the main songwriter. So, here are my favorite Beatle songs determined by who I believe is the main songwriter of the tune. The Beatles started song writing right from the beginning. Their first album included a mixture of original tunes such as Love Me Do, Do You Want to Know a Secret, PS I Love You along with cover songs ranging from girl groups, R & B, pop classics...

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Book Review: The Soundtrack of My Life by Clive Davis

Back in 1974 I read a book called Clive: Inside the Record Business and it remains one of my favorite non-fiction books. Still have the paperback edition. I was not many years from being a musician at the time, so reading about the inner workings of the record business was interesting and enlightening. Now we have Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of My Life which is an updated version of that 1974 book in my estimation, covering his early years as...

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Movie Review: The Master (2012)

Philip Seymour Hoffman is well cast as cult leader Lancaster Dodd in The Master, the 2012 film from director Paul Thomas Anderson. Unfortunately, Hoffman's performance is caught in a script that flounders around from one disjointed scene after another. So many scenes come and go and are never developed. For instance, there's a scene where Dodd's married daughter makes a pass at Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) while a group of cult followers are...

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Osibisa – Joyful Music

Osibisa hails from West Africa, specifically Ghana but they started recording in London in the late 1960's. The band was a bit of a sensation in the mid 70s and their popularity continues today, even though you've probably never heard of them. They've been labelled World Music, AfroPop, Highlife, but I would call them jazz/funk due to their incredible rhythms and sensational horn solos including flute, flugelhorn and trumpet, along with an amazing...

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Rock 'n' Roll Will Never Die — But it Did (Part 1)

... at least, it did for me sometime in the mid 1990's. The scene had changed. Boy bands, hip hop, rap, grunge, spicy girls dominated the charts and it didn't do much for someone who'd grown up with Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, the Blues, Otis Redding, James Brown, Sam & Dave, Isaac Hayes, Motown .... I'm not trying to knock the "rock" music of today — every generation has their musical heroes --...

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Book Review: Sanctus by Simon Toyne

Once in awhile I buy a book on impulse, never having heard about the author or the book, but simply due to the cover art and the brief plot summary. In the past, this impulse has led me to some great authors and books, including Relic, by Preston and Child as well as John Connelly's The Killing Kind. If you're into reading thrillers, then standing in a book store skimming a copy of Sanctus will definitely get you excited. The art work is top...

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Random Thoughts - Shadows

We live in a world of shadows. Shadows of our ancestors. Shadows of ourselves. Shadows of lost loves and crossroads never taken. Within these shadows lay secrets and dreams that haunt and mystify. During the darkness of night, shadows blend into and invade our dreams. Thoughts become like shooting stars bouncing around in our brain. Shadows capture our thoughts, infiltrate and inflate our desires and secretly transform what might be into what...

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