Category Archives: pop music

Nicos Gun, laughing at tornadoes

Posted on October 12, 2011 by oddmanout215

From Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test: Coming up over the Blue Ridge Mountains, everybody was stoned on acid, Cassady included, and it was at that moment that he decided to make it down the steepest, awfulest windingest mountain … Continue reading →

Posted in arts, fiction, Philadelphia, pop music | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Adios, summer girl. Or is it ‘sun-eyed’ girl?

Posted on September 22, 2011 by oddmanout215

Summer’s gone and good riddance, I’d rather any weather than a heat wave in Philly. But I still like the idea of summer, which I associate with old memories of hitchhiking, seashore towns, and chasing girls who enjoyed being caught. … Continue reading →

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Are e-books tomorrow, or just the end of time?

Posted on September 18, 2011 by oddmanout215

Check out this from The Economist in case you’re still wondering about the future of mass-produced paper books: To see how profoundly the book business is changing, watch the shelves. Next month IKEA will introduce a new, deeper version of … Continue reading →

Posted in arts, enviromentalism, humor, mainstream media, movies, pop music | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Mitchell’s ‘Coyote’ still lean and mean

Posted on September 4, 2011 by oddmanout215

Recently, watching the Band back Joni Mitchell on “Coyote” (the video I put up here has been blocked) in Martin Scorcese’s The Last Waltz, I wondered about the link between cocaine and the fashionably emaciated look in the 1970s. Never … Continue reading →

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We’ll all be rain dogs soon

Posted on August 27, 2011 by oddmanout215

For those in the path of Irene: “Rain Dogs” from Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs (1985) According to reports, Philadelphia will get more rain this weekend than any other major city in the region. Bad news for those of us in … Continue reading →

Posted in food, livable cities, Philadelphia, pop music | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Some ‘Rain’ to keep us sane in Philly

Posted on August 20, 2011 by oddmanout215

At last the rain god intervened to clean the stinking streets — am I paraphrasing Travis Bickle? — after the hottest July on record in Philly. And now there’s a chance this will be the city’s wettest August on record. … Continue reading →

Posted in arts, humor, livable cities, Philadelphia, pop music | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

More songs about buildings and bikes

Posted on August 17, 2011 by oddmanout215

I was watching a sunburned woman with red hair in a thick braid. In the corner of my eye, a bike rider zoomed past and disappeared behind a bus. I stepped into the street for another look, but the rider … Continue reading →

Posted in arts, enviromentalism, Great Recession, humor, livable cities, Philadelphia, pop music, The New Depression | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Her fame was fleeting, but Jones’s songs endure

Posted on August 13, 2011 by oddmanout215

Mojo has been a better music magazine than Rolling Stone for a long time, and forget that there isn’t much good music to write about these days, that’s another story. The July Mojo profiled singer/songwriter Rickie Lee Jones, who debuted … Continue reading →

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Father’s Day works better as fiction

Posted on June 24, 2011 by oddmanout215

[This one got lost in the shuffle, but I’m guessing my legion of readers won’t mind that it’s a week late.] One of the pleasures of writing a novel is you can decide when and how things happen. For instance, … Continue reading →

Posted in fiction, pop music | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

In praising Scott-Heron, Inquirer buries his message

Posted on June 1, 2011 by oddmanout215

Gil Scott-Heron, the African-American poet and musician who died this week at age 62, was most famous for his recording of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” a funny and uncompromising call-to-arms that envisions the downfall of the corporate masterminds … Continue reading →

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