Bloggerhythms

A few days ago I saw  A Complete Unknown , the new film biography on Bob Dylan. As a movie with a coherent storyline, fabulous acting - especially by its star,  Timothée Chalamet - you couldn't ask for more. Unusually, for a mainstream Hollywood film, it's mostly accurate. That  means a lot to me because I've always been a curmudgeon when movies and TV shows play too fast and loose with historical facts so much that the viewer gets a totally skewed view of real events. Because I liked the movie a lot and wanted to continue liking it, I began researching its historical accuracy online after I got home.  I'm OK with the  liberties  director James Mangold took because he didn't change the intent of the storyline. According to the website, Shortlist , it doesn't matter that actress Elle Fanning's character, Sylvie Russo, is an entirely different woman than Suze Rotolo who was Dylan's real first girlfriend in New Yor...

Let me start by acknowledging that I've always been a fan of Peter, Paul and Mary. I once saw the trio in concert at the famous Musikfest   in Bethlehem, PA. I own their four CD box set and a couple of their later albums. I recently played their live, Christmas CD during the holidays. Peter Yarrow died of cancer on January 7, 2025 at age 86. I'm aware that I posted on several social media platforms that I wasn't going to write a tribute to him because of his past. That's still true, but his disgusting, criminal acts are bothering me too much to ignore them. There was an extreme paradox between the public life Yarrow led - and what he and his singing group meant to a multitude of noble social causes - compared to what went on behind the scenes. These contradictions compel me to say something about him now because of the way many media outlets are reacting to his death. Most older music...

I've written about singer-songwriter Chris Pellnat   a few times before. He's released several folk-rock albums while playing a wide range of instruments, but his new single, "We Are Not Robots," is a bit different. It's a true rock record blending multiple influences. You'll hear grungy guitars and new wave keyboards along with the star's always pleasing, idiosyncratic singing and his inclination for writing pop hooks. Thematically, "Robots" is Pellnat's emotional reaction to unfortunate, major news stories of the past year. In the first verse, a female friend says to him, " please don't expect me to act my age"  a nd l ater she defends her actions by saying, "I'm trying to escape reality." Pellnat explains that he's "horrified" by our current state of affairs and how they've affected his "overall outlook and mental health"   forcing him to seriously cut back on his news con...

Image courtesy of Mohamed Hassan via Pixabay Last year - instead of publishing its own list - Bloggerhythms highlighted a handful of "best of" posts published by some of the music blogs and websites I read regularly. I'm making this an annual event, so as the calender flips to 2025 the sophomore edition is now online for your perusal. Some of the bloggers mentioned below are publications with national or international reputations, others were posted by independent, personal blogs like mine with smaller readerships. This year's set of links features fourteen lists posted in no particular order. Let's hope the man jumping across the gorge in the picture above makes it across to the new year, and I hope all of you do to. ______________________________________ Just Backdated doesn't offer us the usua...

With deep apologies to the Grammy Awards it's time to present the 1st Annual Bloggy Awards showcasing the best in music and related art forms of 2024. Not everything listed below is new this year, but to paraphrase Casey over at The College Crowd Digs Me , "Every song or album is a new one if you haven't heard it before!" Last year I began posting other bloggers' annual "best of" lists. It proved to be popular, so part two of this year's recap will be an expanded second edition that will be available to readers on New Year's Eve. I know you'll find some clever and unique lists, so stay tuned. _________________________________________ Easily, the Bloggy for "Best New Album" this year is presented to a very talented newcomer Kimmi Bitter, a California country star greatly inspired by Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn. I review...

When I vacationed in Hawaii in 2009 I discovered that the islands' music was one way the formerly independent kingdom celebrated their unique heritage. When scanning the car radio dial it was easy to find stations that programmed nothing but Hawaiian music, and some of them were broadcasting entirely in the fiftieth state's native language. While in Honolulu I discovered Grammy winner Henry Kapono who's been one of Hawaii's most loved musical icons for decades. Known almost exclusively in the 50th state, Kapono is a versatile musician and singer-songwriter who helps to keep his beloved culture alive while exploring mainstream pop-rock and many other genres over his long career. In 2006 Kapono recorded a rock album while singing all of the songs in the island's indigenous tongue on The Wild Hawaiian . On other occasions he's played acoustic folk-rock and straight-ahead pop music, almost all of it in English. For many yea...

Before 2024 I only wrote about one other comedy Christmas record, I Yust Go Nuts At Christmas by Yogi Yorgeson , but this year I seem to have overdosed on novelty tunes more than a little bit. Perhaps it's because I believe we all need a little more lighthearted fare than usual this holiday season. The 3 Stooges Sing 6 Happy Yuletide Songs is one of my favorite, childhood, Christmas memories. At the time, I thought the Golden Records ' 45 RPM was the funniest thing I ever heard. It offers six very short songs and comedy bits featuring Larry, Moe and Curly Joe, the last of three replacements for the original Curly. My mother was one of those concerned parents who disliked the The Stooges short, often violent films, but she let me watch them anyway because she understood I wasn't going to torture helpless puppies and kittens when I grew up. There isn't much to say about the record except that it's exactly what you'd expect from...

For seven straight years beginning in 1963 - even before they were famous in America - The Beatles recorded annual Christmas messages exclusively for their fan club members as a holiday thank you. They were issued on seven-inch, vinyl records that were very thin, very bendable, and easily damaged. These flexi-discs, as they were called, could not be stacked on record changers. Over the years the tracks have been bootlegged in countless ways, and until a few years ago the only legal release was sent to fan club members in 1970 on 33 RPM vinyl records after the boys from Liverpool went their separate ways. The LP cover shown here is from that album. Finally, in 2017, a limited edition box set  on colored vinyl was released and is now an expensive collector's item. Many Beatles fans managed to hear these records over the years, and with the Internet being what it is, there are several websites where anyone can easily listen to all of them.  Archive.org ...