My first generation Sicilian great-uncle was in the army in WWII and spent the whole time running gambling operations and black market schemes. The story was that he had twenty grand stashed away when he liberated his dad's home town. I believed him, as my mom said the family never had to worry about rationing during…

I was thinking of that show too, I've been trying to find it for years. Lead Frank Converse is one of those 1960s/1970s actors who popped up everywhere but never quite became a TV star, although he came close with "Movin' On". He's in the wonderfully twisted Bing Crosby TV movie "Dr. Cook's Garden" and an episode of…

It's certainly mine. And the subject matter is far more interesting than what Isbell writes about now.If almost any other singer wrote a song with that title it would about a shotgun wedding, but Isbell does something totally different with it. That's what is mostly missing from his recent work, the decidedly unique…

Thank God I'm not the only one! DBT and what Isbell did with DBT(and SOTD) are so much better than the recent solo albums that the NPR crowd are drooling over. I much prefer the depth and range of what DBT and Isbell's older songs addressed to the more singer-songwriter-ish stuff he makes now. It's good, but it pales…

I think the most horrifying thing I've ever read was something like "Survivors said they said they would never forget the screams of the animals. No animals died in the fire".
I'm sorry about your grandmother. Pretty much no awareness of PTSD back in those days. If it's not prying, how old was she when it happened?
I'm…

Charles Nelson Reilly was in the Hartford Circus Fire. About 1990 or so he was in New Haven directing a play and ended up in a bookstore my friend owned and they talked for about 10 or 15 minutes. My friend said that Reilly mentioned the fire and how he always made a point of knowing where the exits were. I thought…

A friend who I was once very close to, the type of friend I would see every weekend, died from a brain aneurysm eight years ago. He had been both a raging alcoholic and a prescription drug addict at different points but had been sober for few years, happily married and a father of one with another kid on the way at…

Decades ago I was in a record store and ended up hearing almost the entire side of the LP that the clerk was playing. It was acoustic and moody, a bit like Skip Spence's "Oar". I decided I needed it so I asked the clerk who it was. She held up the cover of Manson's "LIE" album. I bought it on the spot. It's certainly…

Good call, which the Professionals album totally backs up.

Thanks, now I feel a little less self-conscious about usually downing a pint in ten minutes, which is about how long he went on for.

I once made the mistake of asking a musician/producer friend of mine why Brian May has such a distinctive sound. The lecture lasted a full beer.
To this non-musician May and Gilmour had the most distinctive sound, along with Jerry Garcia's on lead. And Johnny Ramone, of course.

The first space western, or so it was billed as! I first saw it about 1974 and finally saw it again a few years ago. Such a weird mix of camp, '60s mod and two fisted western. And Catherine Schell, too.

Tommy's Blugrass duo Uncle Monk played a local club with at most 25 people in the audience. I was horrified by the turnout and so was my freind, who had recently finished off his attic to be a home bar with the PA from his now defunct band. Tommy agreed to play for $500, nothing more. We asked him what he wanted for…

As an uber-nerd I have to point out a *fourth* media Lewis did well in. He had a DC comic "The Adventures of Jerry Lewis" that ran from 1957 to early 1971, and had previously been  "The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis". The comic actually outlasted his film career by a bit since "Which Way to the Front?"…

As an uber-nerd I have to point out a *fourth* media Lewis did well in. He had a DC comic "The Adventures of Jerry Lewis" that ran from 1957 to early 1971, and had previously been  "The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis". The comic actually outlasted his film career by a bit since "Which Way to the Front?"…

Speaking of David Bowie, and predating every song here:

Speaking of David Bowie, and predating every song here:

"Rock 'n' Roll Damnation" is up there with "Blitzkrieg Bop", "New Day Rising" and "Rocks Off" for the greatest opening tracks of all time.

"Shut Up and Get on the Plane"  "Greenville to Baton Rouge" and  "Angels and Fuselages" by the Drive-By Truckers form a kind of tour spiel in Southern Rock Opera.

@lightaugust:
"The n——-'s the one that would even think about telling you."