I sometimes do crazy things to experience live music. In my late teens I met a woman&mdash;a friend of a friend of my girlfriend&mdash;who was a flautist attending the Mannes School of Music in New York City. She was a classic New Yorker, from a classic New York family. Though apparently demure and retiring, she had fearlessly ridden the city subways since childhood, taking the Broadway line at any hour of day or night (her stop was Dyckman Street, above 200th). All of her parents' money and energy, such as it was, had gone into their daughter's musical career, and I was so inspired by this level of focus and devotion that I hitchhiked from Boston to New York and back in order to attend her first concert, a performance of the two Mozart flute concerti. My presence was remarked upon as the act of a true friend, but <I>I</I> was the beneficiary: It was a great concert, and a good start to a life of experiencing the "call" of live music.

David Gates is grumpy about the hoopla over <I>On the Road</I>'s 50<SUP>th</SUP> anniversary. Grumpy, but not to the point of ignoring the occasion.

Has Scorsese made the ultimate up-close-and-personal documentary about the Rolling Stones? While I'm sure it's a good concert movie, I'm not sure there <I>is</I> any reality to the Stones any more. As a student of film, Scorsese knows that when the legend becomes fact, you shoot the legend.

A Flickr photoset.

Garth Cartwright profiles David "Honeyboy" Edwards on the eve of his European tour. He heard Charley Patton and Tommy Johnson, the musicians regarded as Delta blues founders, play when he worked on a plantation. Big Joe Williams taught him music and how to hobo. He busked with the Memphis Jug Band, hung out with a teenaged Howlin' Wolf, and recorded for Alan Lomax. And in 1945 he took Little Walter to Chicago.

For good measure alone, Critics, particularly the cranky ones like I've recently become, all deserve a well&ndash;placed boot up the arse once in awhile and so, much to my delight I too loved much of <I>The Simpsons</I> movie I prematurely sniffed at last week on this forum. I even get to add this delicious addendum: The critics are wrong! It's pretty wonderful. Many great bits. Much self-deprecation. Maggie emerging as a full&ndash;blown character. Okay, okay: I was wrong.