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Showing posts from October, 2016

Discovering Kings of Leon

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Proof of Purchase. Earlier this year I was surfing various songs on youtube for my Notice: Music e-zine.  One thing often leads to another when I am doing that.  I check out performers that I have never heard of before just to broaden my knowledge of what is out there.  So it was that I randomly happened upon Kings of Leon (KOL).  They are not a new band but, since I basically live in middle of nowhere and my friends are not necessarily into newer alternative rock, the band was new to me.  When the band was maturing I was busy listening to the Backstreet Boys   and NSYNC with my pre-adolescent daughter, so my mind was elsewhere.  What a wonderful find! Off and on over a few months, I acquainted myself with them enough to know they were a band whose music I wanted to acquire.  It was an experience similar to my discovery of The XX - which I blogged about previously .  KOL has been around a lot longer than The XX and has a larger catalog of music.  I purchased a fine boxed set

Sizing Up the Downfall: HST on the Campaign Trail 1972

Note: This is the final entry of a four-part review on Hunter S. Thompson's gonzo history of the 1972 presidential election. The month of October in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ‘72 takes up less than three pages.  By this time HST was in despair over the prospect of Nixon’s re-election, when a McGovern victory seemed so promising at the end of July. “Due to circumstances beyond my control, I would rather not write anything about the 1972 presidential campaign at this time.  On Tuesday, November 7th, I will get out of bed long enough to go down to the polling place and vote for George McGovern.  Afterwards, I will drive back to the house, lock the front door, get back in bed, and watch television as long as necessary.  It will probably be awhile before The Angst lifts – but whenever it happens I will get out of bed again and start writing the mean, cold-blooded bummer that I was not quite ready for today. “That is the one grim truth of this election most likely to

Meeting McGovern: HST on the Campaign Trail 1972

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Hunter S. Thompson with Senator George McGovern in 1972. Note:  This is part three of a four-part book review. HST had exceptional access to the brain-trust of the McGovern campaign and he spent most of his time reporting what he learned from observing and talking to them.  He met McGovern personally on several occasions.  Most encounters are mentioned in passing in the book, but a few others are entertainingly fashioned by HST, who has a knack for mixing in a heavy dose of factual truth with some, shall we say, embellishment.   Gonzo journalism is meant to shock and entertain as much as present the facts. “It was up in New Hampshire, several weeks before the vote, that I blundered into the now infamous ‘Men’s Room Interview’ with McGovern.  People have been asking me about it ever since – as if it were some kind of weird journalistic coup , a rare and unnatural accomplishment pulled off by what had to have been a super-inventive or at least super-aggressive pervert. “But in