Robert Baird

If songwriting is a lost art, then Guy Clark will always be one of its greatest old masters.

And then there was Pono! Or not. Despite prompt denials by the folks at Pono, it now seems likely that the still mythical, high resolution music player will not be delivered to customers, who to date have kicked in $13 million via Crowdfunder and Kickstarter, until early 2015.

Is there such a thing as a bad Lightnin' Sam Hopkins record? No, but there are a lot of badly recorded Hopkins records. Happily, Goin' Away originally released in 1963 on the Bluesville label (an imprint of Prestige Records) isn't one of them. And the already good sonics have even been improved in yet another superb 180gram Analogue Productions LP reissue.

Long ago, I stopped associating Act II of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake with dancing. Now, every time I hear it, I immediately flash on broken battlements, a black cape, and Béla Lugosi's unmistakable Hungarian accent: "Listen to them—cheelllldreennn of dee night. What muuuusic they make!"

Then there were James Bernard's tense scores for the Hammer films—like Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), starring Christopher Lee—that my parents somehow let me see in a theater when I was seven, as part of an afternoon of bargain monster movies that included all the sourballs and unbuttered popcorn you could wolf down. Scared to death, my life was forever changed.