whoops. corrected.  grazie

I was reading the book on a plane recently and the flight attendant stopped to comment that it was the "densest" book he'd ever read. I thought that comment was pretty appropriate. You really need to get 150 pages into a very thick sea of information before you even start to comprehend Smiley's tack, but the payoff is…

I think Pollard’s approach to lyrics is spot on: they should be, above all else, in service to the song. I would wager his primary concern is how the words themselves sound. I’m sure he’s also trying (and mostly succeeding) in making the lyrics interesting, but “making sense” and “meaning” I doubt are major concerns.…

Yeah, that is a great album. Navigating Flood Regions is severely underrated in the Pollard song book. And what about Same Place the Fly Got Smashed, with the immortal "Pendulum"?

I agree. Side 2 of Tattoo You is really quite remarkable.  Add Worried About You, Tops and Waiting on a Friend to the songs you've mentioned and that's a pretty unassailable side of a record.   
 
I also strangely find that Tattoo You has a coherence that I don’t find in Some Girls.  You would never assume the one…

This is a very well known bootleg, The Brussels Affair, that's pretty easy to get online, so the Stones finally got smart and are charging for it. it's definitely the best semi-official live album in their catalogue, if you take both performance and sound-quality into account.  In fact, if anyone downloads this I'd…

Well, Mick was living in NY at the time, so I think it was more a case of someone moving to NY and then feeling an overwhelming compulsion to talk about how awesome it is.  Sort of like everyone else who ever moved to NY.  Not that the rest of them did it as good as Shattered.

That's a pretty good breakdown, and certainly in Boston proper it might be unusual to see that mix, but you will still find plenty of overlap in places just outside of downtown like Somerville, Cambridge and certain areas of Allston/Brighton. As for Norm, legions of guys like that still work in the Financial District,…

I will second Halloween, which scared the crap out of me as a kid when I first saw it,likely because it tears away the idea of security in an everyday American neighborhood. Similarly, the realism of Silence of the Lambs had a similar effect on me when I saw it in college. I felt a complete lack of control over my own…

True, there are countless decisions going into a nature documentary, but
the outcome, what ends up in the film and not on the cutting room floor,
is not entirely predetermined. In the bonus material for Planet Earth I recall they were quite
matter of fact about how a lot of the great shots were a result of
careful…

A nature documentary is recording what's real. A film is recording something that's been purposefully staged for a similar effect. So is shooting a real boxing match no different than staging one, say as in Raging Bull? It's not like Malick just walks outside and turns the camera on.  This argument isn't allowing for…

Excellent piece. I have to register a difference of opinion though on the readings of some of these songs. Specifically, the assertions that "Worried About You" and "Waiting on a Friend" are, respectively, Mick giving himself a "kiss-off", and Mick's growing awareness of "rock star bullshit".  I think in both cases,…

"Did you stick your finger in my peanut butter, Puck?"

Great call on Gentlemen.  A phenomenal album and one of the best tours I ever had the privilege of witnessing. 
 

When I think of 1993 (the year I graduated college, so an easy year to remember) the first album I think of is Mescal Head. It's still a great mystery to me why that didn't break Swervedriver to a larger indie rock audience. Perhaps the vibe was too obtuse, not aggressive or angsty enough, for that era.  Anyway, the…