John Lennon — Rock ‘n’ Roll
In the midst of my well-documented Beatlemania, a state that possessed me, and my roommate, from near the middle of my freshman year at college until well into junior year, and given that I...
Author: cjvinyl
Yoko Ono — Feeling the Space
I’ve been trying to listen to each of these records as I write them up for this project, whether I think I know them well or not. In some cases, that has slowed this...
The Plastic Ono Band – Live Peace in Toronto 1969
It’s a shame that The Beatles, a band that became famous, initially, for their amazing live energy, left that legacy behind midway through their career and never got to properly capture a good live...
John Lennon / Yoko Ono — Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins
Having grown up on ’70s hit radio, for several years I was more familiar with the Beatles’ solo works than with actual Beatles music. John, Paul, George, even Ringo were all having at least...
The Left Banke — The Left Banke Too
As iconic as their first album was, The Left Banke pretty much split up before “Walk Away Renee” was even a hit, coming back together and then breaking up again. Various iterations of the...
The Left Banke — Walk Away Renee / Pretty Ballerina
This is truly one of the most important albums in my life. I’m sure I picked it up in those early days of my record-collecting, when any oldie was a good oldie (almost), and...
Larkin Poe — Kindred Spirits
See my last entry on Larkin Poe’s “Self Made Man” for the story of my discovery of Larkin Poe. One of the delights of this pair of sisters is their obvious joy in just...
Larkin Poe — Self Made Man
Listen, when a new artist comes out, everybody says that they’re the latest and greatest, that they’re the heirs to this and that, that they area doing something amazingly new, taking it back to...
Christine Lavin — Good Thing He Can’t Read My Mind
How did I discover Christine Lavin, several years before my big neofolk immersion? I think it had to have been through NPR. In the mid-’80s, and especially in my grad school years, NPR was...
Things We Said Today