
Colin Fleming
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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."
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 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.
Film talk on Downtown with Rich Kimball
02.21.2023
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."
Op-ed in the New York Post
02.14.2023
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.