So let get me this straight. Orrin Hatch, Republican senator from Utah, is one of the heavy hitters whose deluge of 11th hour phone calls not only springs music producer Dallas Austin out of a Dubai jail for coke possession, but it also helps to turn a four year jail sentence into a pardon?
In this digital life we’re all now living does it get any better than calling AOL and canceling an account? I hate to be <I>Flashdance</I> about this but—Oh, what a feeling!
Being a sixty year old rock star ain't easy, but there’s gotta be a better way for rock bands to grow old than the one Aerosmith has chosen. A symphony gig? What's next Disneyland on a co-bill with Up With People?
No matter how you feel about the whole New Orleans fiasco—my two cents: Ray "chocolate city" Nagin’s lack of chops are now going to be exposed posthaste—there are parts of that town that cannot be allowed to go away, first and foremost the musicians, many of whom still teeter on the brink or have fallen head first into the abyss of financial ruin.
<B><I>Dirty Little Secret</I></B>
The Seventies. That ancient lost era, that musical wasteland, the decade everyone (who doesn't know music) likes to rag on, continues to supply Madison Avenue with new and exciting fodder.
Walking to the train this morning I saw a woman who was a dead ringer for Sara Carter, wife of A.P. Carter, whose leaving to marry A.P.'s cousin Coy torpedoed the famous Carter Family.
Back when everyone was rushing to convert LPs to CDs, the boxed set was a wondrous thing. The rush to "box" every artist propelled the record biz to some of their best Christmas seasons ever. It even inspired some labels to get off their then wealthy asses and dig around the vaults to find that most marvelous of record label offerings, the "bonus track."
This just in:
Overheard (coming out of mine and other nearby mouths) at a tavern in Brooklyn: