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Thirty-five minute radio interview about the best player in ever position in baseball history

05.09.2023

Latest Beatles piece

05.08.2023

A feature on the Beatles' oft-maligned--and undervalued--cover of "Mr. Moonlight" in Best Classic Bands. "The power of the singing—which requires commitment by design of the song—implies that this person behind it has reason to believe his wish may be granted if he asks hard enough. Even the announcement that the song was next to be played had power in Hamburg: the audience knew that from out of the silence would emerge this blast of a John Lennon vocal, naked and reverberating in the air."

Hockey radio interview

05.02.2023

Talking about the Boston Bruins' historic collapse. 

Beatles feature in The Daily Beast

04.30.2023

Some horror radio

04.25.2023

A discussion regarding audio productions and readings of works by Algernon Blackwood, Shirley Jackson, E.F. Benson, M.R. James, and Washington Irving. 

Wes Montgomery feature

04.23.2023

The final issue of JazzTimes--dated April 2023--has a 2500 word piece on Wes Montgomery and his first album. There won't be a link to the piece online, but it will eventually appear in Play the Words: Writing on Jazz. 

Sports piece in The Smart Set

04.20.2023

On Carlton Fisk and a lifelong love of catchers. "If the New England soul — the spirit of what it means not just to be from these parts, but of them — could be encapsulated in what others humans might look to and say, 'Oh, yes, I get it,' it would be the Fisk dance."

Sports radio

04.18.2023

Thirty-five minute segment on Downtown about the Celtics, Bruins, Red Sox, and two works of sports literature. 

New piece on Paul McCartney's guitar playing in the Beatles

04.15.2023

From Best Classic Bands. "Was McCartney just a natural? Did he practice regularly? There’s a difference between writing a song on a guitar—which takes minimal technique (Sam Cooke, for example, wrote his songs on guitar, and there aren’t Sam Cooke guitar solos that we celebrate; there aren’t any)—and playing a solo to marvel at."

Radio interview about director Leo McCarey

04.11.2023

On Downtown to discuss America's first true auteur, with a special focus on an essay 1937's Make Way for Tomorrow, the so-called most depressing film of all-time, from Watching Back: Writing on Movies that Light Us Up.  

Op-ed in the New York Daily News

04.09.2023

Op-ed in the New York Post

04.08.2023

On the remarkable Francoise Gilot, the talented artist and writer whom Pablo Picasso treated poorly, and who is still with us at 101-years-old. 

Cape Cod Times op-ed

04.07.2023

This is an opinion piece on David Ortiz's finest moment on a baseball field which ran last August and was only now discovered to have done so. 

Interview about engrossing children's television fare that is also perfect for adults

04.04.2023

A conversation on Frog and Toad, The Children of Green Knowe, Bagpuss, the BBC adaptation of Edith Nesbit's The Railway Children, and the excellent Scottish series, Maggie. 

Radio interview about John Lennon's guitar playing

03.28.2023

Back on Downtown for an in-depth analysis of John Lennon, guitar player. 

On the subject of imbibing

03.21.2023

A conversation on Downtown about what one man drinks and the very specific reasons why. 

Interview about assorted live rock and roll recordings

03.14.2023

A discussion on Downtown pertaining to rare and/or newly discoverd live tapes from Led Zeppelin, the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, and Bob Dylan. 

Blues interview

03.07.2023

Blues radio talk: ranging from the Delta to Stax to an open air market on Chicago's West Side, with a few opening comments about publishing.

Radiohead piece

02.20.2023

An essay in The Smart Set on "Creep" as one of the best songs ever written. "The concerns of “Creep” — the overwhelming doubt with which this narrator contends — go back to an age before language itself. Grunting cave people could have heard this sound and recognized it as common emotional ground."

Downtown with Rich Kimball appearance

02.14.2023

Talking about Chris Sale, Orson Welles and Les Miserables, a new Jimi Hendrix archival release, the first live performance of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity, and John Keats' "What the Thrush Said." 

Beatles interview

02.07.2023

Interviewed on the radio about the book-in-progress, Giving You Everything: A Hard Day's Night and the Artistic Zentih of the Beatles, and the 585-minute recording session from February 11, 1963, that produced the Beatles' first LP. 

2000th entry of the Many Moments More blog

02.04.2023

Launched in June 2018, the Many Moments More blog has now reached 2000th entries, totaling 2.35 million words. 

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