TITLE: I Wanna Be Literated! 094 A critical evaluation of Nowhere Men Volume 1: Fates Worse Than Death Trade Paperback by Eric Stephenson and Nate Bellegarde DATE: 12-03-15 WRITER: Ollie Ottoman How exactly does Nowhere Men manage to fit so much into so little? Maybe because it’s the kind of comic that practices what it preaches… at least in the sense that it brings together a super-team which, unlike the protagonists in this story, actually manages to achieve something greater that themselves. ?Nowhere...
TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 110 A deeper look into the grooves pressed into the Live in Denmark, 1971 2LP by Johnny Cash DATE: 12-04-15 WRITER: Bill Adams Maybe the coolest thing about the listening experience of Man In Black: Live In Denmark 1971 is the genuine reality of it. See, the nature of live albums in the twenty-first century has become focused on single artists; modern live albums simply compile a series of tracks which happened to be recorded (often in...
TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 111 A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the A Legend In The Making–Live at El Mocambo 2LP by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble DATE: 12-04-15 WRITER: Bill Adams It’s a far more rare event now than it used to be thanks to the internet digitally bootlegging music and making it all available for the downloading, but there are some albums which are regarded as lauded and collectible – even now. These albums are usually...
TITLE: I Wanna Be Literated! 093 A critical evaluation of The History of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell DATE: 11-26-15 WRITER: Ollie Ottoman You have got to give props to my main man Bertrand Russell for pulling off such a magnanimous project and pulling it off so well. As he says in the introduction, the key to writing this book involving a rundown of the entire history of Western philosophy is to touch on each of these guys just enough so...
TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 106 A deeper look into the grooves pressed into the Record Store Day-issued 10” ‘Painkiller’ single by Judas Priest. DATE: 11-27-15 WRITER: Bill Adams Hey – remember that period of time when the lights went out in Judas Priest? There have been a few reasons for the stall proposed over the years, but the truth is that it really needed to happen; the truth is that Painkiller (the band’s twelfth studio album) was a portrait of a...
TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 107 A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Black Friday-released reissue of the ‘Rock Me Amadeus’ 7” single by Falco. DATE: 11-27-15 WRITER: Bill Adams It might sound like an unusual endorsement, but few singles are so historically impressive as Johann “Falco” Hölzel’s “Rock Me Amadeus.” Released in 1985, the song marked both Falco’s greatest hit as well as illustrating just how quickly rap had extended its musical reach around the world. Thirty years later...
TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 108 A deeper look into the grooves pressed into the Record Store Day-released ‘Everyday People’ split single by Jeff Buckley and Sly and the Family Stone DATE: 11-27-15 WRITER: Bill Adams The catch about really trying to review a split single is that the artists included don’t always fall on the same musical line for easy comparison. Likewise, somtimes the songs don’t really jive well together either – but then there are the really unusual cases which...
TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 105 A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Record Store Day pressing of the ‘Batman theme’ 7” single by Neal Hefti DATE: 11-26-15 WRITER: Bill Adams It might sound like earnest overreaching to contend at first, but the “Batman Theme” written by Neal Hefti and featured (in varying lengths) at the beginning of every episode of the original Batmantelevision series broadcast from 1966 to 1968 of ABC is a genuine classic. I don’t mean ‘classic’...
TITLE: Vinyl Vlog 103 A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Criss Cross by Thelonious Monk. DATE: 11-26-15 WRITER: Ollie Ottoman There’s nothing I like better than trading favorite albums with friends. That friendly filter applied to the music we’re consuming goes a long way, and it’s still my highest recommendation when I’m asked what the best way is to find new music. It was in the Summer of 2005, right before I went to grad school, that a...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Record Store Day-pressed reissue of Earthling by David Bowie. Leave it to David Bowie to wrap a perfectly tongue-in-cheek idea in populist medium and make a celebration of it. That is, of course, precisely what the singer has done in licensing Earthling for a fresh vinyl pressing now, almost twenty years after the album was originally released. Confused reader? Let me clarify it for you: when Earthling was first released in...