Favorite Songs By Favorite Artists (Series Two) #56: Jed Davis (And Related Bands)

December 19, 2021December 20, 2021 / J. Eric Smith / Leave a comment

Note: For an index of all articles in this second “Favorite Songs” series, click here. For a summary of all artists covered in the original series, click here.

Who He Is: I’m deep in “year-end list” mode at this point, but I do pause on that annual endeavor to return to this ongoing series of “Favorite Songs By Favorite Artists,” to celebrate a particular favorite. Jed Davis is a Long Island-bred singer-songwriter-keyboardist with a stunningly deep and broad history as both as a live performer and studio wizard, working since the early 1990s as a solo artist and as the primary creative talent behind a variety of stellar bands, including Skyscape, The Hanslick Rebellion, Jeebus, Sevendys, and others. In both his band and solo endeavors, the list of players who have been excited to work with him is somewhat mind-boggling, with the likes of Chuck Rainey, Reeves Gabrels, Anton Fig, Jerry Marotta, Sheridan Riley, Ralph Carney, John Sebastian, Brian Dewan, Tony Levin and many others appearing on his records, of which there are a lot, over the years. (Long-time collaborators Mike Keaney and Alex Dubovoy may not have the same public cache as those previously-mentioned players, but I’d be remiss to not include and celebrate their contributions to Jed’s catalog over the years). Without a shred of hyperbole, I would easily and readily declare Jed to be one of the greatest American songwriters of the past half-century, and unlike a lot of his music-scribbling peers, he’s also capable of standing on stages and earning equal respect as one of the most talented and bracing live performers of that period as well. Jed lived and worked for quite some time with The Ramones’ behind-the-scenes genius Arturo Vega (RIP, alas), working on their Rise and Shine musical for many years. (I visited Jed at “The Ramones Loft” a few times when he was living there, and Artie and Jed gave me a mini-tour once, e.g.: “Here is where Dee Dee burned a hole in the floor while cooking smack.”) Jed also had the most exquisitely rare experience of knowing what it felt like to front The Ramones, when he had the opportunity to sing his song, “The Bowery Electric,” at CBGB, with most of the then-surviving members of The Ramones and their close production associates behind him, celebrating the life of fallen-to-cancer singer Joey Ramone. (Jed had written the song while walking around the Lower East Side in the rain after missing a train on the day that Joey had died). If his musical accomplishments weren’t enough to commend him, Jed is a stellar visual artist as well, who works in design and lay-out for a major national publication during his day-time hours, while also creating equally amazingly artistic presentations for his own work, in the hours between the hours.

When I First Heard Him: There are “I know” and “I think” aspects to answering this question with regard to Jed’s career and how it entered my consciousness. I know that I saw him deliver one of his epic solo piano performances at Mother Earth Cafe in Albany around 1995, when he was a student at the University of Albany. And I think that I saw his then-band, Skyscape, play an early opening set at Albany’s legendarily grotty live music venue, Bogie’s, around that same time, but as a local college band, they weren’t properly introduced, so I can’t swear that it was them, except that my memory of the sounds and visuals of what they did aligns with what I later learned about Jed’s musical career and history. I know that the first record of his that I enthusiastically reviewed in print was We’re All Going To Jail! (1997). And the first times we actively communicated were when I was booking shows for the Time Warner Cable music television show, Sounding Board, which featured a live Collider performance, and when I was doing a feature piece for Metroland right at the turn of the millennium, and I interviewed Jed for his thoughts on keyboard technology at the time. (That article earned a “Best of My Archives” nod a couple of years ago, here). Jed and I have orbited each other in various capacities in the years since then, and I’ve remained a staunch supporter of his work all along the way; a search for “Jed Davis” on my website reveals just how many times I’ve written about him over the years, and he remains one of my most favorite creative types, doing just absolutely brilliant work, year after year after year. I’ve already featured him twice here over the past twelve months, applauding the series of career-spanning digital EPs he has recently released, and placing the compilation version of those same EPs in the Top Ten of my Best Albums of 2021 report.

Why I Love Him: On a top line basis, this is an easy one to answer: because Jed Davis is an objectively and absolutely genius creator, as a songwriter, as a singer, as a player, and as a visual artist. When you encounter someone with the degrees of talent which Jed possesses, you’d be a fool not to love the resultant work emerging from that talent’s wellsprings, and a knave not to try to share its brilliance with others. When I focus on Jed’s musical efforts (given the point and intent of this series) and think about what moves me most, the things that pop to mind are that he’s got an incredible gift for crafting resonant songs and melodies, that he’s got the technical chops to do justice to his vision with his own playing, and that he understands the value of collaboration deeply enough to surround himself with the absolute best talent available to him to bring his songs to life. As a lyricist, Jed is a keen and astute observer of the world around him and of his own human condition, and he’s also funny as hell when he wants to be. Some of his very best songs find that rare and perfect sweet spot where the bitter and the sweet cross paths, leaving us listeners to make strange faces and feel confusing emotions that may be happy, or may be sad, or may be something inexplicable and special between those points, all of our buttons pushed, just so, by the genius of his songs and story-telling. At bottom line, I love Jed Davis as a writer, as an artist, as a singer, as a player, and as a dear friend. My life is richer for knowing him and his works, and I am thankful and grateful for that, always.

#10. “The Bowery Electric,” from I Am Jed Davis (2009), credited to Jed Davis

#9. “Happy Black Steamroller,” from Song Foundry 3-Pack #004 EP (2021), credited to Jed Davis

#8. “Big Hot Monday,” from The Rebellion Is Here (2007), credited to The Hanslick Rebellion

#7. “Mock Cheer,” from WCYF (2003), credited to Collider

#6. “Yuppie Exodus From Dumbo,” from “Yuppie Exodus From Dumbo” single (2010), credited to Jed Davis

#5. “City Of My Dreams,” from Song Foundry 3-Pack #002 (2021), credited to Jed Davis

#4. “1991,” from WCYF (2003), credited to Collider

#3. “O Death,” from Song Foundry 3-Pack #004 EP (2021), credited to Jed Davis

#2. “Across A Thunderstorm,” from Song Foundry 3-Pack #002 (2021), credited to Jed Davis

#1. “Who’ll Apologize for This Disaster of a Life,” from “Who’ll Apologize for This Disaster of a Life” single (2017), credited to The Hanslick Rebellion

Best Of My Web 2021

December 17, 2021December 17, 2021 / J. Eric Smith / 6 Comments

I’ve been online for a long, long, long time, in the relative terms that Internet experience can be measured. This blog’s archives extend back to 1995 (before the word “blog” even existed), and I was romping and stomping about in virtual spaces even earlier than that, like some digital dinosaur hauling its hunky heft through a primordial dial-up ASCII swamp.

With a quarter-century-plus experience in sorting the garbage that spills out of the Interweb’s pipes, I think I’m pretty discerning in plucking the shiniest gems from the stinkiest spew of the online world. And being a community-oriented sort, I’m happy to leverage my online explorations to share a roster of the websites that moved me most over the past year, in the hopes that you might find them engaging and entertaining as well.

Before I get to this year’s roster, though, I do have to note and acknowledge that my long-time, most-favorite website went dark this year, after author Rick Harris died of cancer this past April, way too young, leaving his Thoughts on the Dead website behind as an epic example of how fine writing can build worlds, and communities. Honestly, for as long as I’ve been online (which is a long, long, long time), I’d likely cite his written work, and the community he built, as perhaps the greatest thing that I’ve loved and embraced and endorsed through this, our digital era. He was a true once-in-a-lifetime genius, and I miss him and his writing, a lot. More thoughts (or “Thoughts”) on that, if you missed them when I first posted them, here.

A couple of other long-time favorite sites have either gone dark or sporadic in 2021:

Rob Madeo‘s Keyboard Krumbs: At the time that I am compiling this list, Rob’s site seems to be consistently returning a “Nothing To See Here” response to hits from my browsers. That’s happened before, and it may just be a short-term hosting thing, or it may just be a super-good writer deciding that he’s had enough of this online nonsense, and choosing to spend his time and creative energy elsewhere. (I embed a link to his site above, even though it is broken as I do so, in hopes that it will return at some point, either as an archival resource, or as a going concern). As noted years ago in the link from his name above, I hold Rob in very high acclaim as a guy who can say a whole lot with a very small amount of text. I seriously see that as something to which I should and could aspire, but I’m just too damn wordy, so I’m doubtful that I’m going to ever rise to his level of brilliant concision.
Mimi Smartypants: Another long-time favorite who has appeared on my “Best of the Web” lists many times over the years. Her site is still live as I type today, but she’s only infrequently posting at this point, such that it’s a thrill whenever one of her new missives arrives. (We got one this week, as it turns out, hooray!). I have loved her writing for many, many years, but the sense of awe and respect that I feel for her work was amplified dramatically during the four years when we lived in Chicago, when I was a bus and train-riding fool, making her references to those always-interesting modes of transport, and the work and residential neighborhoods they connect, all the more brilliant and real for me. Not to sound like a weirdo stalky guy, but she used to write about L stops and bus routes that I also rode regularly, so it was satisfying on some plane to know that she might have been sitting behind me some days, describing what I was looking at and seeing and smelling better than I ever could have.

I’ll be first in the fan-boy line when and if Rob and Mimi make a big, splashy return to regular web posts, but if that doesn’t happen, then I doff my cap to them both for the years of grins and giggles that they’ve provided me. And having acknowledged Rick and Rob and Mimi as part of a most respectful preamble, I now move on to the ten websites that are live and active as I write this post, and which provided me the greatest quantities of giggles and joy and thoughtful thoughts and entertainment over the past twelve months. I hope you will give them all a look-see and (where appropriate) a follow, as they’re all worthy of your support and engagement.

Going Medieval: Dr. Eleanor Janega offers (in her own words) “Medieval History, Pop Culture, Swearing.” I love all of those things, and I adore her site, which brings history to life, while illuminating and (often) eviscerating modern stupidities that are anchored in misunderstandings of the past. Great writing and great fun. My Website of the Year for 2021, for sure.
The Haunted Generation: I spend a lot of online time mucking about with folks in the British Isles, but few things make me wish I were English more than this site. The creators deftly explore cultural and media tropes from the years of our shared childhoods, and their work is educational and entertaining in equal measure, especially if you are drawn to the weird.
Aphoristic Album Reviews: I love a good music-nerd list, which is an “a-DUH!” statement for anybody who has read this site for more than two weeks. Aphoristic sits sweet in my current reading pantheon as the work of another list-making fiend, whose tastes overlap with mine regularly, so I feel smart being able to meaningfully respond to his great work.
Art & Crit by Eric Wayne: In my experience, there are folks I admire as tremendous artists, and there are folks I admire as tremendous art critics, and the Venn Diagram of those two communities has but a tiny over-lapping sliver. As small as that sliver is, Eric Wayne sits within it, a super creator, and a super analyzer of others’ creations. Great reads, always.
The Blue Moment: Richard Williams was a long-time writer, editor and/or on-screen personality for Melody Maker, The Times, The Old Grey Whistle Test, and many other music-adjacent outlets, making him one of the most-influential music thinkers to emerge from Britain in the latter part of the 20th Century. His website offers more of the same, gloriously, thankfully.
The Fall Online Forum: While the amazing musical group that originally inspired the creation of this site are no more, (see here), the community built to celebrate them (and countless other topics of interest) churns on, and I’m happy to have it as my current “Serial Monogam-E” site of choice for real-time Internet interaction, other social media be damned to hell.
Vinyl Distractions: Carl Johnson is a long-time web connection from our Albany days, and I have deeply enjoyed his My Non/Now-Urban Life and Hoxsie! websites over the years. His latest offering is basically an online tribute to his record collection, and, of course, that tickles me to no end, both in terms of what he owns, and how he writes about it.
Ramblin’ With Roger: Another friend from Albany days, Roger Owen Green is a super-long-time daily blogger of refined tastes and interests, many of which closely align with my own. Roger also brings his formidable librarian skills to organizing his information, and that’s a noticeably great thing in the mostly mucky mire of poorly-curated online experience.
Messy Nessy Chic: One of the most-interesting sites online, and also one of the prettiest. Nessy’s every-Monday “13 Things I Found on the Internet” series is a weekly highlight for me, and her/their articles throughout the week are almost always interesting, educational, and visually sumptuous. A fine creative and commercial aesthetic here, worthy of emulation.
Chuck The Writer: Chuck Miller is yet another friend from Albany days, and like Roger above, he is a long-time daily blogger, so you always have something(s) new to read from him, no matter how long you wait between visits. Chuck is also a tremendous champion and advocate for online community-building, and I deeply appreciate his fervor on that front.

Dr Eleanor Janega’s article from “Going Medieval” which compared/contrasted Modern Influencers and Medieval Damsels was a mind-blowingly fun bit of history writ large, and snarky.

Best Television of 2021

December 16, 2021December 27, 2021 / J. Eric Smith / Leave a comment

As noted, teased and promised in yesterday’s Best Films of 2021 post, this, our viral life, has found me unexpectedly watching far more television over the past two years than I have at any time since (maybe) my early Saturday Morning Cartoons days (and even that’s a bit questionable, time-wise). While I have certainly sat through some disappointing time-wasters over the past year, I’ve also really enjoyed a fair number of things that I don’t think I would have bothered to watch, pre-COVID. And, me being me, that means I have to make a list, and share said list with you.

While these shows do not appear the list below, because they either did not air in 2021, or did not originate in 2021, I do note that I am most excited about the return of Letterkenny later this month, and that we’ve watched the first episode of the normally outstanding The Expanse, which was, alas, kind of meh. I also adored Sherman’s Showcase, which was a 2019/2020 release, but which promises a second season soon. So if this becomes an annual year-end list, then I suspect you’ll see some or all of those three (if The Expanse bounces back during its final five episodes, anyway) in my hypothetical 2022 list.

And with that as preamble, here are my ten favorite multi-episode things that I watched on television over the past year, and that do not qualify (to my mind) as feature films . . .

#10. Brand New Cherry Flavor

#9. Only Murders In The Building

#8. 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything

#7. South Side

#6. Reservation Dogs

#5. Resident Alien

#4. The Beatles: Get Back

#3. Letterkenny

#2. Squid Game

#1. Ted Lasso

Best Films of 2021

December 15, 2021January 9, 2022 / J. Eric Smith / 2 Comments

What a weird year for movies 2021 has been!

Right off the bat, the obvious defining weirdness is that I have not set foot in a movie theater in almost two years at this point. A bit less obvious: I have not historically been much of a television watcher, but in early COVID days, Marcia and I generally made an active effort to sit together to watch something on television most nights, and that habit has endured through 2021. I have not done so in the past, but as I look at the things that pleased me this year, I think that I probably need to do a “Best Television of 2021” post as part of my year-end wrap-up, covering the “non-movie” portion of our viewing experiences.

I likely watched more feature films in 2021 than in most any other year of my adult life, but I did so from the comfort of our plush command center at home, in front of our big-screen wall-mounted television, and not in a cinema setting. I know a lot of folks might find that disappointing, but I have to say, it’s been pretty great to not have any movies ruined in 2021 by assholes on cellphones or by chatting audience members or by glitchy sound/projection, or by annoyingly bright “EXIT” signs above open doors that admit the sounds of a crowded lobby into my viewing space. I could get used to this. No, scratch that: I have gotten used to this. While I’ll be happy at some point to watch a film with a popcorn bucket bigger than my head oozing iridescent butter-flavored topping into my lap, for now, I’m all good with the privacy and focus that our home-based paradigm provides.

The other weird aspect in defining “Best Films of 2021” is defining exactly what counts. On a strictly calendar basis, I would certainly cite The Sound of Metal and Promising Young Woman among the very best things released in the past twelve months, but due to the shifts in award scheduling associated with the Anno Virum, both of those films were included in last year’s (belated) Oscar cycle, so it seems counter-productive to praise them now, since they’ve already gotten their award-season due. On the flip side of that, Nomadland also technically came out in 2021, winning a bucket-load of Oscars, and annoying me deeply, as I consider it to be one of the most over-rated films in recent memory, ugh. (I’d give that award for the latter part of calendar year 2021 to Dune. Two-and-a-half hours to get halfway through the book? No thank you. And Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO, NO!!! And NO!!!!! And did I mention NO!?)

Another weird factor to consider for 2021 movie lists: there were loads of films, mostly foreign ones, that debuted in the international festival circuits in 2019 or 2020, with their producers intending to release them in the United States shortly thereafter, only to have their plans duly and fully virused, like so many other plans, by so many other people. So the various American streaming services ended up offering we United Statesians with our first opportunities to see a lot of killer films from abroad, making them technically 2021 releases as far as domestic eyes are concerned, even though they may already have been a year or two old in terms of their own indigenous release dates. And then there’s the final weird factor with regard to streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime and Hulu and Disney+ and HBO Max, who released their own feature films on their own television platforms, raising the question (again) about what counts as a television show, and what counts as a cinematic film release.

In reviewing the (long) list of everything I watched (however it might be categorized) in 2021, I’ve decided that my basic premises for my Best Films of 2021 list will be to only include domestic films that did not make the deadline for consideration in the most recent Oscar cycle, and to include any non-domestic films that first saw release in any format since the end of that same Oscar cycle. As I am posting this annual report before the end of both the 2021 calendar and award years, I do note that I have not yet seen the following films, but I hope to do so before year end, and I suspect that some of them may well be lifted into the “Best of 2021” list after I have a chance to see them. Please let me know if there are others that I need to prioritize in the weeks ahead.

C’mon C’mon
Licorice Pizza
Memoria
Nightmare Alley
Old Henry
Parallel Mothers
Red Rocket
Titane
The Worst Person in the World

With all of that as a long preamble, here are my picks for the Best Films of 2021, in two broad categories:

Best New Feature Films of 2021:

14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible
Annette
The Card Counter
Censor
Concrete Cowboy
Cruella
Cryptozoo
The Dig
Don’t Look Up
Free Guy
The French Dispatch
The Green Knight
The Harder They Fall
The Killing of Two Lovers
Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time
Lapsis
Last Night in Soho
The Lost Daughter
The Mitchells vs the Machines
The Outside Story
Passing
Pig
Plan B
The Power of the Dog
Saint Maud
Say Your Prayers
Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
Together Together
The Velvet Underground

Best Foreign Language Films Receiving First Wide U.S. Release in 2021:

About Endlessness
Bergman Island
Dead Pigs
The Disciple
I’m Your Man
Keep An Eye Out
Mama Weed
Mandibles
Night of the Kings
Undine
Who You Think I Am

As a bonus feature, because I’m a bonus feature-offering kind of guy, if I had to cast an Oscar Ballot today, here would be my picks among the major categories, or among the minor categories where something really stuck with me for one reason or another. I suspect that some of the things I cite below might not actually qualify for the 2022 Oscar presentations, since I’m not quite sure what they’re including and what they’re not including, but within my own rubric for what’s a great 2021 film, here are my choices:

Best Feature Film: The Killing of Two Lovers
Best Director: Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog
Best Actor: Clayne Crawford, The Killing of Two Lovers
Best Actress: Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter
Best Supporting Actor: Benecio del Toro, The French Dispatch
Best Supporting Actress: Regina King, The Harder They Fall
Best Cinematography: Eduard Grau, Passing
Best Costume Design: Cruella
Best Animated Feature Film: The Mitchells vs The Machines
Best Documentary Feature Film: Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time
Best International Feature Film: Night of the Kings
Best Production Design: Adam Stockhausen and Rena DeAngelo, The French Dispatch
Best Original Song: “So May We Start,” (from Annette)
Best Score: Annette
Best Adapted Screenplay: The Power of the Dog
Best Original Screenplay: The Killing of Two Lovers
Best Big-Budget Boom-Boom Zip-Zap Pew-Pew Style-Over-Substance Soul-Free Awards for Pretty Stuff Made on a Computer and Put on A Big Screen With Some Really Loud Noises: Dune

It’s not getting a lot of media attention, but this is truly a remarkable film for the ages, and I recommend it to you, most heartily.

Best Books of 2021

December 13, 2021January 12, 2022 / J. Eric Smith / 2 Comments

In January of 2019, I closed out all of my social media accounts and made an active commitment to read more books of substance, and less ephemeral drivel, than had been the case in then-recent years. I have been pleasantly surprised to see what an effective gambit that has been when I have done my Best Books reports over the past couple of years, and found myself with a wealth of great reads to choose from. In 2021, that trend expanded even further, and I suspect that I have read more books in the past 12 months than in any other year of my life since I moved beyond picture books into word-based tomes, and excluding the years when I was in school devouring (or skimming and pretending to devour) textbooks. I guess being mostly retired has also helped on that front.

Objectively speaking, my life has been far less anxious and agitated after I departed from the hateful and untrustworthy online worlds that Jack and Zuck and their evil greed-head ilk have built to destroy us all in the name of share-holder equity. What a truly shitty paradigm the social media experience is, on so many levels. I look forward to us collectively moving beyond it at some point, though I am not enough of a futurist to see how and when that might happen. I just know that it is a long overdue transition, and that tomorrow’s historians will likely look at how we spent our time and framed our arguments in the first quarter of the 21st Century and will wonder “What the hell were they thinking?!? And how could they have collectively been so very, very stupid?!?”

One way we get stupider, in real time, is by not reading great books by great writers, so I feel like I again did my own small part to stay smart in 2021 by continuing to devour a wide range of new books by authors both familiar and fresh. I share my lists of the best new books I read this year below, parsed into three categories (1) Novels or story collections published in the United States in 2021, (2) Novels or story collections published in or before 2021 abroad, which saw their first American releases in English translations in 2021, and (3) Non-fiction works published in the United States in 2021. Within each category, the books are listed in the order I read them.

I have marked a baker’s dozen titles/authors in bold on the lists below; these are the books that I would most highly commend to you as the very, very best of 2021. Perhaps some of these works will move you too. Or perhaps some other literary thing will have rocked your world rigorously enough that you’d like to share a recommendation in the comments. Happy to hear from you, in either case!

BEST ENGLISH-LANGUAGE NOVELS OF 2021

Summerwater, Sarah Moss
Good Neighbors, Sarah Langan
Fake Accounts, Lauren Oyler
No One Is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood
Infinite Country, Patricia Engel
Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
Hummingbird Salamander, Jeff Vandermeer
Composite Creatures, Caroline Hardaker
Second Place, Rachel Cusk
Subdivision, Robert Lennon
The Atmospherians, Alex McElroy
Hollow, B. Catling
Malibu Rising, Taylor Jenkins Reid
Hot Stew, Fiona Mozley
Virtue, Hermione Hoby
The Startup Wife, Tahmima Anam
Something New Under the Sun, Alexandra Kleeman
A Touch of Jen, Beth Morgan
Appleseed, Matt Bell
The Book of Form and Emptiness, Ruth Ozeki
Bewilderment, Richard Powers
Revelator, Daryl Gregory
This Thing Between Us, Gus Moreno
Build Your House Around My Body, Violet Kupersmith

BEST NEW ENGLISH EDITIONS ISSUED IN THE UNITED STATES IN 2021

The Woman in the Purple Skirt, Natsuko Imamura
People From My Neighborhood, Hiromi Kawakami
The Cabinet, Un-Su Kim
Tender is the Flesh, Agustina Bazterrica
The Hole, Hiroko Oyamada
Mona, Pola Oloixarac
The Twilight Zone, Nona Fernández
There’s No Such Thing As An Easy Job, Kikuko Tsumura

BEST NON-FICTION WORKS OF 2021

Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World, Andrea Pitzer
Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, Avi Loeb
The Witch of Eye, Kathryn Nuernberger
Under A White Sky: The Nature of the Future, Elizabeth Kolbert
A Little Devil in America, Hanif Abdurraqib
Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age, Annalee Newitz
Madhouse at the End of the Earth, Julian Sancton
Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else, Jordan Ellenberg
All or Nothing: The Story of Steve Marriott, Simon Spence
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, Amanda Montell
This Is Your Mind on Plants, Michael Pollan
Rainbow in the Dark: The Autobiography, Ronnie James Dio
Finding The Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, Suzanne Simard
God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning, Meaghan O’Gieblyn
Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres, Kelefa Sanneh
You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone, Jennifer Otter Bickerdike

I have two new-ish 2021 books on my Kindle right now (Gary Shteyngart’s latest novel, and a biography of Led Zeppelin) which might need to be added to the lists above in the weeks ahead. We shall see. At bottom line, 2021 was a great year for reading!

If I had to pick a Book of the Year for 2021, this one would probably be it.

With Which I Am Well Pleased XV (Feet of Pure White Snow)

December 12, 2021 / J. Eric Smith / Leave a comment

Yet another installment in my recurring series, within which I share 15 things that have rocked my world over the past month or so. I’m working on various “Best of 2021” lists this month (see here for the first of that set), as one does, so this is likely the last short-term report of recent pleasures, before I shift fully into annual highlights. As always, I welcome your suggestions on things that I might have missed, but need to see, hear, watch, read, eat, play with, or experience!

FILMS: