Listening – Page 2 – Warren Bluhm

The power of a song

I hadn’t had a CD player in a while until I found a good one at a picker sale Saturday, so now I have a little complex that will play any of the formats I own music on — records (78, 45 and 33 rpm), CD, cassette, reel-to-reel and digital. I even have an 8-trackContinue reading “The power of a song”

Stuck in Lodi awful young

One of my favorite rock bands is Creedence Clearwater Revival, and one of my favorite CCR songs is “Lodi,” the ballad about a talented young man seeking his fame and fortune, the one who the magazine said was on his way, but somewhere he lost connections and ran out of songs to play. “Oh Lord,”Continue reading “Stuck in Lodi awful young”

Unforgettable forgotten albums: Kongos

It’s spring 1972. I thought I had never heard anything like it before. When I reached the final track, I realized that I had. The cover of the promotional LP I’d grabbed at random in the college radio station was striking. I mean, look at it. Fifty years later the colors have yellowed a bit,Continue reading “Unforgettable forgotten albums: Kongos”

These are the good old days

“We can never know about the days to come, But we think about them anyway … So I’ll try and see into your eyes right now And stay right here, ’cause these are the good old days.” Carly Simon, “Anticipation” Carly Simon’s song about the difference between anticipation and reality comes to the wonderful conclusionContinue reading “These are the good old days”

A year without music?

I wrote my top 10 for 2021 in a bit of a hurry the night before it posted, and it shows. For one thing, I mentioned the Netflix miniseries The Queen’s Gambit as one of the year’s highlights, and I realized later that the show appeared in 2020 and was also on last year’s TopContinue reading “A year without music?”

The puppy, freedom, and music

Summer bristles at limits, which makes her a dog after my own heart. The limits are our way of keeping her safe, but who are we to assume we know what’s good for her? Maybe she is capable of fending for herself. I see a similarity in the way government looks after us — asContinue reading “The puppy, freedom, and music”

Artichokes and roses

One last thing I loved about Michael Nesmith was his quirky habit of giving songs names that never appear in the lyrics. My favorite group, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, covered two Nesmith tunes in their masterpiece album, Uncle Charlie and His Dog Teddy. The LP begins with “Some of Shelley’s Blues,” which has theContinue reading “Artichokes and roses”