Category Archives: music

DIRTY OLD TOWN by the Pogues 2009

Today several hundred bands will parade up 5th Avenue in New York in honor of St. Padraic. Not one of them will play DIRTY OLD TOWN. I love the Pogues and what about Spider’s teeth. real stumps they are. So for a good lift give this a listen And if you don’t like it, Go […]

Delusional Deja Vu – Le Abbee of Saint Michel de Cuxa

In 1988 I spent the summer in Perpignan, France. My good friend, Olivier Brial, arranged my stay with his cousin, Jacques Vial. The family house on the Quai Nicolas Sidi Carnot was in the center of the old Catalan city. The River Basse coursed past the fourth-story mansion east to the sea in Olivier’s parents […]

HEAVY METAL ACCORDION by Peter Nolan Smith

Every boy has a best friend in his youth. In 1959 I was lucky enough to have two; my older brother Frunk and a neighbor. Chaney and I attended the same kindergarten class at Pinewood Elementary in Falmouth Maine and we did almost everything together boys were supposed to do that far north. In the […]

Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud – 2010

Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud. James Brown sang those words to the entire nation. Even the KKK heard, but back in the 1960s not everyone was listening to the singer of PLEASE PLEASE ME, since black music was broadcasted on the far ends of the AM radio spectrum. In Boston at night […]

No Music Day 11/21 Pattaya

From 2007 Last week on during my holiday stay in Thailand Jamie Parker said that he had never seen a group of people more allergic to silence than the Thais. The TV never gets a rest. Rice farmers wake to loudspeakers blaring crop prices. Dogs howl without an owner’s restraining smack and karaoke bars punish neighbors with painful renditions of […]