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Sarah Witkowski's All-Time Most Epic Songs

Back in February 2008, senior contributing editor John Marks decided to hold a competition.

What this competition is about is finding five songs from what I will loosely call the Rock Era (written anywhere, but only since 1954) that, in craftsmanship, musicality, intelligence, and emotional impact, can give the lieder and chanson traditions a run for their money.

Fun, right? Several of our readers came up with excellent lists, but one winning list that I found especially impressive came from Sarah Witkowski.

My name is Sarah Witkowski. When I read about…

The Chair is not my Son

It’s a sure thing that Michael Jackson’s life was not going to end pretty. In fact, it can be argued that this mode of death is not the worst thing that could have happened. Seeing him waste away from cancer or die in prison, or collapse and die onstage would have all been worse. You could feel that how ever it was going to occur, Michael stood a good chance of going out in spectacularly tragic fashion. If the rumors are true, it was a shot of Demerol and he stopped breathing. At least it was mercifully fast. Can you imagine the mad scramble that’s now going to occur for his assets…

Gil Evans' <I>Out of the Cool</I> in 45rpm

Acoustic Sounds, Chad Kassem’s Oz of analog wonders, has expanded its line of 45rpm jazz reissues to the Impulse! catalogue. Like the Blue Notes, which Kassem and Mike Hobson’s Classic Records have already covered (at 45, 33-1/3, 180g, 200g, black vinyl, clear vinyl, just about any format you might imagine), the great Impulse! albums were engineered by Rudy Van Gelder and featured the masters of their day—Coltrane, Mingus, Rollins, and, one of the most innovative big-band arrangers in modern jazz, Gil Evans.

Out of the Cool, recorded in 1962, stands as Evans’ grandest achievement, apart…

The Same River Twice

Looking for a small, manageable paperback to read on a commute to Great Neck and back, I picked up a vintage paperback of Ross Macdonald's The Drowning Pool, a novel I'd read 25 years ago. I didn't exactly remember the plot clearly, but my recollection of my fling with Macdonald was that most of his plots dealt with the sins of the grandfathers being visited upon the third generation after.

The Drowning Pool sort of meets that description, but I was startled by two elements I don't remember from my first reading: the intensely poetic description of the physical world and how hollow some…

Vinyl Man

Um, Vinyl Man's favorite colors are orange and green, obviously. This photo was taken by intrepid crime photographer, Michael Lavorgna, outside the old Justice League Europe Headquarters in Paris, France.

Vinyl Man's Digital-Proof Shield

If Vinyl Man had a shield, it would look something like the Thorens TD 309 turntable. But it would be orange. Or green.

The Thorens TD 309

Look: I mean, listen: I mean, look: I'm the sort of guy who is comfortable with the idea that there's more than just music to this whole hi-fi thing. It's not all about the music. That's bullshit. It's also about friendship and peace and art and beauty. It's about belonging. You can get into hi-fi even if you don't listen to music. What? Yes! It's about getting drunk and high and lost. It's about girls and boys. It's also about the gear. But you can get into hi-fi even if you don't like gear. What? Yes! It's about more than just what the gear does. It's also about how…

A Delirious Masterpiece

Photo: Michael Schmelling

Tomorrow is National Sonic Youth Day. (I just made that up.) The band will be performing songs from their new album, The Eternal, at the grand old United Palace Theater up in Washington Heights on 175th and Broadway. For some enticing photos of the venue, visit their gallery. It was born as a Loew's Wonder Theater, one of just five flagship movie palaces known for their lavish beauty and built to mark the chain's dominance of the metropolitan movie-going community. The 175th Street Theater was opened in 1930, while the other four palaces threw wide…

RIP MJ

If you like freak shows, then the current travails of the Republican Party are incredibly sweet. Marc Sanford’s “I’m gonna try and fall back in love with my wife” nonsense [need dental work? try repeating that one to your wife?], Palin’s rambling, basketball–and–dead fish–laden resignation speech, and now the pride of Long Island, U. S. Rep. Peter King, calling Michael Jackson names on the day before he is buried. “Lowlife,” “pedophile,” “child molester,” oh yeah, King hit `em all. The run of bad news on Jackson is about to begin again—his toxicology report is gonna cause a circus, not to…

Sonic Youth: Madness and Ecstasy

We have to thank 24 year-old music lover, uglypodcast, for this excellent footage from Sonic Youth's July 3rd performance at the grand, old United Palace Theater on 175th and Broadway. Amazingly, this is almost exactly as I saw it; the camera must have been very near where I stood. In fact, the handclaps you'll hear at about 2:00, along with the maniacal howl that erupts at 2:24, belong to me. The limp and weary hands that show up at around 4:13 are almost certainly mine, as well.

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They lived in that space where the deepest ecstasy mingles with danger and madness…