A Summer To Remember

Fifty years ago this week, on July 3, 1969, Rolling Stones guitarist and founder Brian Jones was found dead in his swimming pool. The death was ruled to be accidental, but to this day, conspiracy theories circulate that he was murdered. Jones had actually been forced out of the band earlier that year, and replaced …

Forecast: Snow, Ice, Slush, Snow, Slush…

Six inches of snow, followed by several days of temperatures in the teens or 20s. Rinse. Repeat. That's January in St. Louis so far. Or at least the last couple of weeks. And although the driving portions of the roads have been cleared nicely, the edges of the roads and the sidewalks have been covered …

Refreshing My Music

At the beginning of this week, I trashed my entire iTunes music library on my computer at work. It consisted of 4,077 songs, which, if played consecutively, would go on for 13 days, three minutes and 20 seconds, according to the application's statistics. Over the last couple of years I've imported a number of CDs …

Speaking Of The Rolling Stones…

A friend of a friend posted this on Facebook, and I just had to pass it along. At various times, I have tried listing my All-Time-Top-Five-Favorite-Songs (try it sometime; it's a lot harder than you think), and I usually come up with two Rolling Stones songs—Sympathy for the Devil and Gimme Shelter—in that list, even …

Lyrics In Exile

One of my favorite lines from a music review comes from way back in 1977, after Linda Ronstadt released the Simple Dreams album. About her version of the Rolling Stones' song Tumbling Dice, the reviewer wrote something to the effect that "the lyrics meant so much more when when we couldn't understand them." I've thought …