This blogger, Richard Gehr, is not an employee of AARP. The opinions expressed in the blog are not necessarily the opinions of AARP and AARP assumes no liability for the content posted by Mr. Gehr or any other participant
Richard Gehr | June 06, 2007
Rollingstone.com has tracked down several architectural icons from the wide world of rock via Google's semi-creepy new Street View feature. Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti building, Bob Dylan's first New York apartment, and Paul's Boutique, of Beastie Boys fame, are now at your literal fingertips.
Police drummer Stewart Copeland has famously panned the third show of the group's reunion tour: "It usually takes about four or five shows in a tour before you get to the disaster gig," he wrote at his website. "But we're The Police so we are a little ahead of schedule."
"One duty of the composer is to expose the unexpected, overlooked and hidden skeins of music woven in the world around us," writes Christopher DeLaurenti in the liner notes to Favorite Intermissions: Music Before and Between Beethoven, Stravinsky, Holst, a John Cage-ian collection of intermission sounds. DeLaurenti made his urban field recordings via microphones sewn into a black leather vest. Clive Bell writes in The Wire that "the musicians sound like a copse full of birds, all individual voices with no intention to blend."
The big chief of New Orleans's 9th Ward Navajo tribe raised a ruckus during Mardi Gras when he debuted a spectacular suit focusing on biblical imagery. Mardi Gras suits are supposed to celebrate Native American imagery, however, so other Indian chiefs were not amused. Katy Reckdahl's Times-Picayune account of the controversy in the paints one of the most colorful and comprehensive portraits of New Orleans Indian culture in recent memory: "After working all year on the feathers and beadwork, Indians used to destroy their suits after wearing them twice: on Mardi Gras and St. Joseph's Night. But new occasions, added in the past several decades, extended the life of those suits. The outfits are now worn on Uptown Super Sunday, at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and-finally-at Downtown Super Sunday. Afterward, the suits are hung on mannequins or packed into boxes, because these days almost no one destroys an Indian suit."
"Sparkle & Twang: Marty Stuart's American Musical Odyssey" opens today at the Tennessee State Museum. The exhibit includes an Elvis Presley sweater, Patsy Cline's makeup case, one of Johnny Cash's "man in black" suits, handwritten Hank Williams lyrics, Rhinestone-bejeweled Nudie stagewear, and surreal cowboy boots. The exhibit runs through November 11.
