[17 Jun 2010 | No Comment | ]
10 Questions with…Sara Jackson-Holman

The Internet is a truly splendid thing.

Last month, while watching the closing scene of the season finale of ABC’s “Castle”, I heard this lovely song in the background and had to know who was responsible for putting a smile on my face. A Google search or two led me to the MySpace page of Oregon’s Sara Jackson-Holman, the piano-playing singer-songwriter whose song, “Into the Blue”, had me repeatedly rewinding the end of my television program. A few emails (thanks to Alex at www.InMusicWeTrust.com) and dozens of listens to the tracks on her MySpace page later, and here we are. To crib the title of Drake’s new album, you can thank me later for introducing you to this great young talent.

Read the full story »

Culture, Editorials »

[19 Jun 2010 | No Comment | ]
Summertime Doesn’t Always Rule

Most of us are familiar with the fable of the man on the roof who turns away repeated rescue attempts because of faith..
SPOILER ALERT: There’s no sequel to the story.
Here we are, entering another summer season that will do its best to knock off the reigning champ as the “Hottest Year EVER”, which was last year. While it’s easy to remain unimpressed by statistics we don’t understand that were compiled from research by people we teased and excluded from the reindeer games of our apparently robust and thriving social lives, …

Editorials »

[23 May 2010 | No Comment | ]
Requiem for a Dream

There is nothing as lovely as love, nor is there anything that stokes the imagination like imagining. For fans of ‘Lost’, this entire series could have gone in a much simpler, more pedestrian direction were it not for the love and imagination of its producers. When ABC approached J.J. Abrams (at the height of success for his show ‘Alias’) to create a show about the survivors of an airplane crash, there was no reason to expect anything more than ‘Prison Break’-level fare. The results of what Abrams & Co. did …

Culture, Editorials, Politics »

[23 May 2010 | No Comment | ]
Don’t Know Much About History…

For years, there’s been a fair amount of carping about the so-called “culture wars” in America without much explanation as to the parties involved or what was at stake. For the layperson, it was pretty easy to break it down to a battle between “smart” and “stupid” and while no one seemed to stand up for the stupid side, the seemingly one-sided brawl somehow still raged on. The fact is that over the past decade and change the sabers have been rattling, the pistol magazines have been loaded with hollow point rounds, and the brass knuckles have been sized and fitted for a real fight. After years of “Wolf!” being cried, the culture wars are upon us.

Editorials, Stories »

[19 Feb 2010 | No Comment | ]
10 Questions With…The Album Leaf

10 Questions with…Jimmy LaValle of The Album Leaf
Congratulations on the new album, A Chorus of Storytellers. Given your reputation for often working alone, how literal should we take this title?
thank you. you should take it very literal. its the exact inspiration for the title. i had all my live band play on this record. we’ve all got stories behind it.
The videos that accompany songs like “On Your Way” and “Always for You” are interesting visual pieces that simultaneously try not to distract from the listening experience. Is this something that …

Culture, Editorials, Politics »

[7 Dec 2009 | No Comment | ]
Devil in the Details

This week will be remembered as the week people got their excuse to not give a damn about global warming. Emails have leaked worldwide that suggest that some of the numbers on climate change have been juked. Now all the people who were too lazy to push their countries to do anything real about the situation can now view their cowardice as clairvoyance.
Bull.
Predictions are predictions. No matter what the field of science, there’s no way to determine exactly when or how most phenomena will occur. What we do know is …