Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms, yearning to breathe free.
Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms, yearning to breathe free.
the Hip Quotient
Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms, yearning to breathe free.
Some of my fondest memories are of the times spent carpooling to work with my dad in the early 80s, gauging his reaction to the hits of the day and the humor of the morning DJs. "Those dirty bastards," he'd chortle at the double-entendres of the radio hosts. Here's a little ditty about Daddy for his birthday.
When I was 16, the woman whose bedroom was above mine in our apartment building was forced to move because I wouldn't stop playing Led Zeppelin's "Nobody's Fault But Mine" at warp sound. I mean, I feel bad about it now, but at the time I felt such a sense of...victory! Behold, the power of rock.
Guido Barilla, president of the world's largest manufacturer of boxed pasta, has vowed his company would never feature homosexuals in its ads. Well, when I heard this news, my thoughts immediately turned to Woody Allen's kooky 1973 film "Sleeper," which offered some insights into the virility-enhancing effects of pasta.
At a show at New York's legendary Apollo Theater a few months back, Bruce Springsteen joked that he was the "hardest working 'white' man in show business." Bruce made this remark in homage to one of his idols, the late James Brown, the soul-funk sensation long known as the "hardest working man" in the business. James, the Apollo apostle, often performed up to 330 one-night shows per year, in extravagant bop-till-you-drop style. Growing up in extreme poverty may have driven James Brown to work till exhaustion, but what inspired a middle-class white boy from Long Branch, New Jersey, to rock his heart out onstage for four hours, night after night, from beach bars to coliseums? "His love of his fans" is one easy answer. But it goes much deeper than that, as I was reminded after reading a fascinating profile of Bruce in the July 2012 issue of "The New Yorker" magazine.
All the Beatles smoked. But then, who didn't have a ciggie 'tween their fingers in those days? Keith Richards of The Stones was simply incapable of playing guitar without a cigarette dangling from his lips. But John Lennon obviously cursed his cigarette habit. In two of his Beatles' songs he makes references to the evil cancer sticks.