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Top 40 Over 40.3: Dimanche a Bamako
My next fave record in this series is Dimanche a Bamako by Amadou & Meriam, which came out in 2005. I have to thank this record for introducing me to the amazing music that has come out of Mali over the years. I heard this album on the radio after it came out on WERS…
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Debt.3: South Dakota
Ever wonder why you get so many credit card offers from banks in South Dakota? You know, those loud envelopes with low introductory APR’s that turn around and clobber you with 25% interest rates a few months later? Rates that bury folks in debt, just like the arid storms that buried much of South Dakota…
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Top 40 Over 40.2: Let England Shake
When I quit making records in 2001, I had a lot of different thoughts bolting around my brain. One of them was that since musicians almost always do their best work in their 20’s, I was heading for a period of diminishing creative returns, even if that didn’t mean diminishing rewards in terms of money…
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Top 40 Over 40.1: She walked in through the out door
Emmylou Harris : Coat Of Many Colours (1977) I’ve just finished listening to Wrecking Ball by Emmylou Harris. It’s a phenomenal record. Why have I never heard anyone talk about it? Below the above picture you’ll find a link to an early clip of her covering another underrated songwriter, Dolly Parton. Could it be that…
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Dear IRS,
Please consider changing the name of the 1040 tax return form to WD40. I think the company would surely be willing to pay the government to name the form after their product, much as firms like Citibank currently pay for the naming rights for sports stadiums. I mean, what’s more visible, the standard annual tax…
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Debt.2
“We’re used to assuming that capitalism and markets are the same thing, but as the great French historian Fernand Braudel (at left in this post) pointed out, in many ways they could equally be conceived as opposites. While markets are ways of exchanging goods through the medium of money…capitalism is first and foremost the art…
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Debt.1
Last week I finished a book I really liked called Debt by David Graeber, (Melville Press.) The author is an anthropologist and an activist who has been involved with the “anti-globalization” movement in general, and the Industrial Workers of the World and Occupy Wall Street in particular. He used to teach at Yale but moved…
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Jumping to Conclusions
I’ve been listening to some records by Kurt Vile this week. (Smoke Ring For My Halo, Childish Prodigy, Constant Hitmaker, God Is Saying This to You…) I first heard his name from an ad on NPR music. I assumed at the time that it was a play on words referring to the composer Kurt Weil. …
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Halftime
Madonna is scheduled to perform shortly after the conclusion of the second quarter of today’s Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants. I saw Truth or Dare when I was in 8th grade and remember all the controversy surrounding her persona when she first came out, most of which had…
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The Man Who Taught Me To Hold a Holga
This is the cover of my first album, Pure Night. The image is an etching I did on a metal plate in high school. I wanted to post a link to the website of the printmaking and photography teacher I studied with back then, who taught me how to do stuff like this. http://www.waltercrump.com/ He…
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johnhdavis / inundation records 