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Showing posts from November, 2014

The Endless River is (Likely) the End of Pink Floyd

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Proof of Purchase.  A handsome package. Pink Floyd is my all-time favorite rock band.  I have blogged about, among other Floydian things, their final set  in 2005 and about their final bow  in 2011. Now comes their final studio album (as Pink Floyd). The Endless River is almost 55 minutes of mostly wordless musical conversations, jam sessions taken from many hours of recordings unused in the band's excellent 1994 record The Division Bell .  David Gilmour and Nick Mason revisited this material which heavily features the keyboard work of Rick Wright who died in 2008.   Roger Waters , the driving force, lyricist, and visionary behind the band's best works, quit in 1985.  Earlier this year the two last men standing in Pink Floyd went back into the studio, sifted through the unused recordings, picking the best parts of what were at the time (in late-1993) hours of improvised musical doodles created while laying down more established songs for The Division Bell .

Neil Young: Storytone

Neil Young has had another busy year both as a performing artist and personally.  Earlier this year he released an album of covers he recorded in Jack White's special "phone booth" studio .  It was intended as an experiment for the fidelity of vinyl sound.  The recordings themselves were not that appealing to me and I will add this one to my Neil collection at a later date when I can get the CD cheaply.  Then Neil left his wife, Pegi, apparently for Daryl Hannah . This motivated long-time band mate David Crosby to critique Neil's new relationship on Twitter.  Crosby has difficulty keeping his mouth shut at times and his comments pissed Neil off. Even Graham Nash, a lifetime collaborator with Crosby, called the comments "inappropriate."  But Neil went a bit too far, according to Nash, on his side of things and declared during a performance that CSNY would never play music again .  Nash thinks that it would be tragic for the musicians not to continue

Watching Interstellar

I saw Interstellar , Christopher Nolan's latest film, yesterday. As long-time readers know, Nolan is my favorite living director.  I have compared him with Alfred Hitchcock in the past but it is more common in the press to see comparisons with Stanley Kubrick .  Both Hitchcock and Kubrick rank as my favorite directors of all-time. The Kubrick comparisons seem more warranted with Interstellar as Nolan's film is obviously inspired by 2001 , one of the greatest movies ever made.   Interstellar is not quite that, but it is sophisticated, often stunning to behold, and surprisingly emotional.  In fact, I would say that Interstellar is the most emotional movie Nolan has directed yet. I read a lot of the early reviews .  Spoilers don't usually bother me but the ones I read were very cautious not to give too much of the plot away.  I won't either in this post.  I will say that the movie has several splendid nods to 2001 .  There are situations and scenes that remind me

Treadwell at the One: The Agony of Defeat

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A new standard for the Agony of Defeat.  I apologize if someone finds this image disturbing.  It is unfortunately necessary to understand how close Ole Miss came to victory and why this was not ruled a touchdown.  The receiver lost control of the football at this precise instant, the ball clearly short of the goal line.  I hope Laquon Treadwell recovers from this heart-wrenching Ole Miss moment.   Although I have never been an Ole Miss football fan I was kind of rooting for them this year.  A storybook narrative was developing as I pointed out in a recent post .  But last night it was not to be. Last night Ole Miss (ranked #4) apparently lost their chance at a national championship by losing at home to an excellent (ranked #3) Auburn Tigers football team 35-31 ( see ESPN's highlights of the game here ).  But it is the way they lost that resonates this morning. I grew up watching ABC's Wide World of Sports on Saturday afternoons.  I saw the really excellent opening sequen