If you trawl back through my website, you’ll find a fair number of fond mentions of Che Guevara T-Shirt, a venerable, unusual, and ever more exceptional noise rock band from Albany, New York. That list of enthusiastic cites gets one entry longer this month with the release of the group’s seventh record, Seven Out, Pay … Continue reading Che Guevara T-Shirt, “Seven Out, Pay The Don’ts”
In the summer of 1993, Marcia, Katelin (then two years old) and I moved to Latham, New York from Idaho Falls, Idaho, following my work transfer to assume a new position in Schenectady. We chose what turned out to be a wonderful rental townhouse (with the best next-door neighbors ever), thinking we’d be there for … Continue reading Ten Years After the 518
I’ve written before about my tendency to resist changes in music-playing technology, holding tight to my albums and cassettes deep into the CD era, clinging to my CDs long after music moved onto our computers, and still raging against the dying of the song files era by refusing to have any streaming music accounts. I’m … Continue reading House Music
(Note: This is one of an occasional and ongoing series of reviews of my favorite novels, structured by covering five facets of my reading experiences, each in five sentences. Scroll down to the bottom of this article to see the complete list of books reviewed). What’s it about? This immense novel opens with a naked, … Continue reading Five by Five Books #9: “Gog” (1967) by Andrew Sinclair
With December upon us, it’s officially time for my annual Albums of the Year Report. 2016 marks the 25th consecutive year that I’ve publicly published a report in either traditional print or digital formats, so it’s a venerable personal tradition for me at this juncture. To frame the process: I’m a big believer that the … Continue reading Best Albums of 2016
Ye gods, he blogs! Or at least he stops by his website to unload some piffle and tripe for your reading pleasure (?) until June’s Short Story of the Month appears . . . On The Stereo #1: I’ve had Tsarskoye Selo by Che Guevara T-Shirt on heavy rotation for the past couple of weeks. … Continue reading Dingen
Eight things, mostly unrelated, as the end of the year looms: 1. When I did my Top 20 Albums of 2014 list, I noted that one of the perils of completing the list in early December was that sometimes awesome things came out in the last year of the month. I will include such items … Continue reading Aštuoni
Today is the day that I reset the five iPods that synch to my master iTunes account. It’s a little earlier than I usually do it, but Marcia and Katelin are taking a road trip up to Minneapolis this weekend, so I thought I would freshen all of the accounts and playlists to give them … Continue reading Most Played Songs of 2013
J. ERIC SMITH 