When Genius Surpasses Itself: A Hermeneutic Reading of Roger Waters’ Composition “Comfortably Numb Re-Imagined” . By a combination of circumstances, I was traveling in the far east of Turkey during those days. I returned to the hotel in the evening after exploring the areas around Lake Van and, following my established routine, put on my […]
I was the species of moody adolescent who drove people away from me when that was the last thing I wanted, so I spent a lot of time alone. I had private enthusiasms. I liked to be in the woods by myself, I liked to sleep, I liked to swim underwater, and I liked to […]
I’m not a Peca Popović. I just put it all together like this: I didn’t know the lyrics of Destiny until now. Sia, inherent in her own right, does what she does in her voice, completely subordinates everything to it, words sometimes do not even make out, she is the most sensual of the three, […]
I thought I knew that song. My mom sang it the most beautifully, with the piano. She still sings it wonderfully today, only the crowd that followed her with the guitar, the maligans and the drunk carp on St. Ignatius has thinned out a bit. One July, I came back from the sea and a […]
Fully settled in Berlin, with a work system established and in a far better place, physically and emotionally, than he’d been in years, David Bowie completed the second LP in his Berlin Trilogy quickly and efficiently. He began right after wrapping Lust for Life, his second collaborative home run with Iggy Pop. Bowie co-conspirator Brian Eno had also […]
The Joy Division story has been told many times, yet it never stops seeming too bizarre to be true. Jon Savage, best known for his classic punk history, England’s Dreaming, was one of the band’s first chroniclers in the 1970s, but he tells the tale in a new way in his excellent new book This Searing Light, The Sun and Everything Else. It’s the ultimate […]
To mark this month’s fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles’ ninth album, “The Beatles”—universally known as the White Album—several new expanded and enhanced editions are being released this week. These new versions were created under the supervision of Giles Martin, the son of the album’s original producer, George Martin. As was done last year with “Sgt. Pepper,” the […]
Claude Debussy died a century ago, but his music has not grown old. Bound only lightly to the past, it floats in time. As it coalesces, bar by bar, it appears to be improvising itself into being—which is the effect Debussy wanted. After a rehearsal of his orchestral suite “Images,” he said, with satisfaction, “This […]