It’s not a spine-tingling who-dunnit, not a long-unsolved case which has baffled the experts, has nothing to do with hip-hop singer M.I.A., or with me or moi (as they say in France). Rather, it’s a mystery who a mid-1980’s Toronto area band called M.O.I. were. I recently bought a used record put out in 1985…
Category: Reading lounge
The Vinyl Detective: The Run-Out Groove
Last year’s The Vinyl Detective: Written in Dead Wax, by Andrew Cartmel, was the first installment in a new mystery series (a series but they can be read independently) and one of my favorite books of 2016 [see my review]. The latest, The Vinyl Detective: The Run-Out Groove, continues the adventures of our narrator and…
Lonnie Liston Smith and his Cosmically Echoing Hats
As I write this (though I confess that I’m typing it a couple of days later), I’m sitting at a quiet café patio table in the shade by myself, sipping on an iced coffee. It’s a warm, late spring, blue sky kinda day and I was planning on listening to Lonnie Liston Smith’s 1973 album…
Pearls Before Swine’s “Island Lady”
I recently wrote a piece for Aquarium Drunkard on the “starkly bleak” but beautiful song “Island Lady” by Pearls Before Swine.
Gregg Allman’s “Multi-Colored Lady”
Though “Melissa” has always been my favorite Gregg Allman song, (and it’s my wife’s name, which bumps it up a few notches), “Multi-Colored Lady”, from his first solo album, 1973’s Laid Back , shares some of the feel and mood of that earlier song. I sometimes picture the roaming traveler of “Melissa” further along on…
Rush’s Deep Cut “Red Lenses”
Rush’s 1984 track “Red Lenses” is a textbook example of a “deep cut”: a track not well known and generally overlooked when an album first came out. Often deep cuts get their moment much later, when everyone’s tired of the hits and explores a little farther. Well, that’s not exactly the case with “Red Lenses,”…
musictoeat.com 