Life is What Happens

Click on the orange link below to read an interview with John M. Borack, the author of John Lennon: Life Is What Happens.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/life-is-what-happens/

That Would Be Something

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Paul McCartney: A Life by Peter Ames Carlin.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/all-my-loving/

On the Road Again

Click on the orange link below to read a review of the rock memoir, Corn Flakes with John Lennon by Robert Hilburn.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/glory-days-2/

I Still Miss Someone

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Composed: A Memoir by Roseanne Cash (Viking).

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/09/12/i-still-miss-someone/

What A Wonderful World of Music

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Good Vibrations: The Physics of Music by Barry Parker.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/wonderful-world/

I'm Down

Click on the orange link below to read a review of You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Breakup by Peter Doggett (Harper).

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/im-down/

Carry That Weight

Click on the orange link below to read an article, The Reviewer's Voice, about book reviewing and to learn about a new Beatles book!

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/you-never-give-me-your-money/

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

Click on the orange link below to read a review of The Cambridge Companion to The Beatles. Fun or overly scholarly? (You might be surprised.)

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/yeah-yeah-yeah/

I, Me, Mine

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Hitman: Forty Years of Making Music... by David Foster.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/i-me-mine/

The life of Louis Armstrong...

Click on the orange link below to read a review of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout.

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/hello-louis/

Can the world and music be explained in just 6 songs?

Click on the orange link below to read a review of The World in Six Songs by Daniel J. Levitin (This is Your Brain on Music).

http://josephsreviews.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/the-world-in-six-songs/

Merry Go Round

Merry Go Round
by Jenny Dalton

How did you pull the wool over their eyes?
It's some trick you pulled, but I am unfooled
Then the sheriff called
and the bible thumped
It's some badge you wear
like you're exalted

It's alright now 'cause I am all that he became
Standing down, staring at infinity
Ride and ride, we'll ride those horses round and round
Dodge and burn
on the merry go round

Underneath your skin, a dark hazard waits
Is this bridge on fire? Were you too late?
This history repeats itself
It's some horse you mount
like you're wiser

Photo: flickr (richiesoft)

Separation from the Herd and Joni Mitchell's Blue

I love music but I do not always feel the need to agree with the biggest critics. For example, I've been a Beatles fan since I purchased the Swan Records label ("Don't drop out!) version of the 45 "She Loves You." And I own everything they've recorded, even the 6 CDs known as Anthology, but I was simply never much of a Sgt. Pepper's fan. Sorry, that album just didn't roll right for me... I'd rather listen to Straight Up from Badfinger.

Similarly, I am and always have been a huge Joni Mitchell fan but - quite honestly - Blue was never my favorite of her many great albums. Blue was a very good collection of naked, angst riden, songs but there's a sameness about the group that I found at first interesting and later just tiring. Because of that, it is not an album I'll go back and repeatedly listen to.

Another way of thinking about Blue is to say that the songs of heartbreak and loneliness might have made up a Carol King or Carly Simon album. Not that there's anything wrong about that, but I failed to see the great originality within.

For me, personally, Joni's For the Roses is a far better album with much more variety. On Roses, we hear a hit single ("You Turn Me On I'm A Radio"), heartbreak folk-rock songs ("See You Sometime," "The Girl in the Bleachers"), classical oriented creations, jazz-based songs, and some songs written on the piano while others were written initially for guitar. It is a more eclectic and original gathering, despite that fact that critics tend to label it as simply "transitional." Whatever...

With Roses, Joni was moving and growing and never standing still or being satisfied with herself. With Blue, she stood still - or sat in one place -sounding tired and defeated... Perhaps Blue was actually her Let It Be.

Some first final words on Michael Jackson...

"Unquestionably, his music was legendary. That's what will last." Aretha Franklin

I was not a late adopter to Elvis Presley. I was just 6 years old when I first heard his music and I knew on instinct - in the words of Bob Dylan - that I'd heard the sounds of a jail break "and I didn't even know that I had been locked up." When my father, in December of 1956, wanted to take me to see a Disney film, I agreed on one condition: that we would first stop at the record store around the corner from the movie theater. That's how I acquired my first 4-song Elvis Extended-Play 45.

The next September I was asked by relatives what I wanted for my birthday, and my answer to all was the same: "I only want Elvis records."

I was not a late adopter to The Beatles. I spent so much time at the three record outlets downtown that I was given hundreds of the "The Beatles are coming!" orange and white Capitol records sponsored stickers to hand out at my junior high school. Mission accomplished.

I will admit to being a late adopter to Michael Jackson (MJ) when it comes to buying his music. No one has to explain the fact that MJ's music was everywhere in the '80s, from nightclubs to dance clubs to city streets to your very own car radio. We thought, foolishly, that he'd always be around - wasn't he always young? - so we would add his music to our personal library at some point down the road. Then, just a matter of days ago, time ran out.

I remember now the first thought that went through my brain, on a night of business travel in L.A. many years ago, when I heard of John Lennon's death: "We'll never be young again." Childhood's end. (The end of the innocence.)

With MJ's death we again got older, a bit more quickly. But I need to say something here about his talent as a singer. Listening recently to some of his best and most famous songs - fast ones and slow ones - it finally ocurred to me that he had the same perfect timing as his friend and mentor Diana Ross. Take any MJ song and tell me where you would change his vocal... It's not possible. There's not a single instance where he should have come in a half-second earlier or a half-beat later.

Such is genius. Such is having The Gift. Such is being blessed with once-in-our-lifetimes talent.

MJ started something... the way he made us feel happy to be alive... he rocked our world and helped us to come together... it didn't matter whether we were black or white. His talent shone a light on us and our needless fears. He became the man on stage, in a small and somber world, who performed joyfully under the brightest of lights. We didn't have the need or the right to ask for anything more...

It was enough.

A Day to Look Back and Remember...

Photos: Los Angeles Times

A Perfect M.J. Collection?

A married couple who are friends are mine happened to have previously owned Michael Jackson's HIStory 2-CD collection. After his death, they realized they could take 15 of the 30 tracks on HIStory to produce a fine one-CD collection. Here's the track listing they came up with which seems like a great career overview with the perfect song chosen as the closer:

1. Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'
2. Don't Stop Til You Get Enough
3. The Girl is Mine
4. Rock With You
5. The Way You Make Me Feel
6. Man in the Mirror
7. Beat It
8. Billie Jean
9. Thriller
10. Bad
11. Black or White
12. Come Together
13. Scream (duet with Janet Jackson)
14. D.S.
15. You Are Not Alone

Image: Amazon

Jackson Music Sales: Off the Wall - ABC News

Jackson Music Sales: Off the Wall - ABC News

Shared via AddThis

Image: Amazon

This Poem

This Poem
by Joseph

This poem is about
your life, not mine,
or hers or his...

In which you
discover what you
need to do
which is not about
me or him or her...

It goes back to you,
returns to you
Because life is about risk
Without risk, you're already...

dead

Find out what you want,
Find what you need,
Start living now, today,
Make this poem a success.


Photo of Jenny Dalton: flickr (Clark Patrick), used with the permission of Jenny Dalton.

Flash! News: BET Honors Michael Jackson This Evening...

The Black Entertainment Television (BET) Network is tonight tranforming its annual BET Awards Show to a Tribute to Michael Jackson. This three-hour show honoring the late King of Pop will be broadcast from The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, beginning at 8:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. Central). Usher and Justin Timberlake are among the many stars scheduled to appear and perform.

For those in the greater Sacramento area, BET can be viewed on Comcast cable channel 73.

A Secret Guide to Rock and Roll...

OK, so maybe it won't be quite as much of a secret after people discover The Girls' Guide to Rocking: How to Start a Band, Book Gigs, and Get Rolling to Rock Stardom. This is a book targeted towards girls as young as 10 years old and as "old" as 16. Well, if you haven't started your rock life by the time you're 16, then maybe it's never going to happen, right?

Just kidding, and here's a review of Jessica Hopper's book, written by Miles Ramer, as found in Chicago Reader. Enjoy.

http://tinyurl.com/o9eevq

Images: Library Thing, Powell's Books