Aug 23, 2011 •
Both were members of song writing teams that shifted the landscape of American popular music. The titles say it all: try to imagine a world without the Leiber-Stoller penned Jailhouse Rock, Hound Dog, Stand by Me, Yakety Yak, Kansas City, Is that All There Is? Everyone from Peggy Lee to Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen (check...
Aug 9, 2011 • Comments Closed
“Who is that?” I recalled thinking as a child when I first saw Jane White in a television version of Once Upon a Mattress. As the imperious Queen Aggravain, her performance was a lesson in comedy and drop-dead stylishness; she was something special, and I looked forward to seeing her again. But sightings were rare—hers...
Aug 6, 2011 • Comments Closed
Something to Look Forward to Dept: Lucille Ball’s birthday is today; had she lived, that madcap comedienne would’ve been 100. But another redhead’s stealing her thunder this week. The season of Lauren Ambrose is upon us; I was elated to see she’s appearing as a rabid press agent on the new season of my favorite...
Jul 27, 2011 • Comments Closed
You could almost call him the voice of America. Dan Peek‘s dry, wary baritone is the one you heard fronting such songs as A Horse with No Name, Tin Man, Ventura Highway and Lonely People. Some would say that America was at the forefront of the California sound that pervaded FM Radio back in the seventies;...
Jul 25, 2011 • Comments Closed
Unless you are a fan of television’s Damages (guilty), most people are unfamiliar with the work of the great Tom Aldredge. On that show he played Glenn Close’s protector, the circumspect Uncle Pete in a subtle character portrayal that was typical of a man whose career made more of a mark on the Broadway stage,...
Jul 23, 2011 •
Too sad for words. A real talent, gone too soon. RIP, miss…
Jul 22, 2011 •
Jul 21, 2011 • Comments Closed
Cat Stevens
Jul 9, 2011 • Comments Closed
Cancer bulletin: nothing relives the doldrums of my birth month like a good laugh. Good luck finding anything resembling that at the movies; sure, it’s air-conditioned but “rom com” beware. The term alone guarantees the absence of wit, or for that matter, anything resembling human behavior. Which means us humor-mongers must reach back to the...
Jul 6, 2011 • Comments Closed
A modern master. Read Jerry Saltz’s consideration of this great artist here. RIP
Jul 5, 2011 • Comments Closed
One of the best British actresses ever, she could go from light comedy to period drama without breaking a sweat. Retrospect: catch her in anything, but especially Hitchcock’s Frenzy, Another Country and the Powell/Pressburger masterwork (her second film) Peeping Tom. RIP.
Jul 2, 2011 •
Live from New York: this morning as a family of starlings chirped me into cognizance, I thought, the past is present again. Funny—it remembered the first day of my Woodstock residency almost a month ago, less evocative of home than a clue to the sheer volume and diversity of bird stock in that neck of...
