Bloggerhythms

I've become addicted to  Tom Petty's Buried Treasure , found at SiriusXM channel 711. It's a continually running, hour long show where Petty mostly played obscure records from his own collection. At one time the program was a weekly feature on the satellite radio service's Deep Tracks channel. Later, all 250-plus episodes were spun off onto their own station. Petty featured a lot of rock and roll, rhythm & blues and straight ahead blues from the 50s, 60s and 70s, but the rocking DJ with a great sense of humor didn't hesitate to play newer stuff - like The White Stripes and Kings of Leon - if he was so moved. The late star has played a lot of very old music that is new to me. A typical show may feature Sonny Boy Williamson, Elmore James, The McCoys, The Zombies, The Animals, Chuck Berry, Ann Peebles, Canned Heat, Paul Revere and The Raiders, Taj Mahal, Jimi Hendrix, The Rascals, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Shangri-La...

John Lennon recorded six albums with his wife, Yoko Ono.  Milk and Honey,  released in January 1984, was both his final one with her and his last record overall. The late, ex-Beatle's six songs on this set were largely recorded during his 1980 Double Fantasy sessions and were intended for later release, but because of his death - unlike the tracks on its predecessor - they remained unfinished when Ono delivered them to the public over three years later. Most of Ono's six tunes on the album were newly recorded in 1983 and were given all the polish Lennon's were orignally intended to receive. They were far more accessible and mainstream than any music the Japanese-American star ever released up to that point. Milk and Honey  made it to #11 in America. Of Lennon's three singles pulled from the disc, only "Nobody Told Me" (#5) reached the top forty. The other two were "I'm Stepping Out" (#55) and "Borrowed Time" (#1...

Cumbria Pizza is an all acoustic, concert album by Hardwicke Circus recorded at Pizza Express Live in Holborn, London, England in May 2023. Although the band currently has only two studio albums to their name, this recent release is subtitled The Greatest Hits Unplugged ,   and while it may seem overblown to talk about "greatest" hits at this point in the Carlisle, UK band's career - especially in America - that superlative easily applies to this show because they played their best-loved and most well-known songs. To quote the quintet's producer  Dave Robinson - who also was the legendary founder of Stiff Records - directly from the back of the LP cover,  "There are two kinds of people in the world, Hardwicke Circus fans and people who haven't heard them yet." Hardwicke Circus plays melodic, upbeat rock 'n roll with plenty of hooks. As mentioned in my earlier review of their latest studio album,  Fly The Fla...

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. ...

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...