04/23/2016

Back home I am, Gentle Reader(s) after many a long mile logged by land, sea (or river), and air. They say that travel enlarges the mind, and though I have no doubt that They are correct in this assessment, travel can fatigue the mind and body as well. Particularly in the case of international travel when more than just a few time zones are involved. There is an eight hour time difference betwixt and between Santa Fe and Amsterdam and by the time I got home I was feeling every second of it. I like to think of myself as zipping and zooming energetically about the planet much in the manner of my ageless hero Tintin (there he is in effigy below, as purchased at the beautiful Tintin boutique in Brussels), but this trip did, in the end, manage to deal out a bit of an ass whuppin of the jet laggy variety. There were extenuating circumstances in the final chapter (I'll not belabor you with that), but for all of the beautiful things I saw and the adventures I had with Inky Mum it is always good to get back home again. Now that I think of it, it was remiss of me not to acquire an effigy of Snowy to go with my Tintin—I think I was distracted by the neato giant mushroom from The Shooting Star. Darn the luck—I'll just have to go back.
04/07/2016

Gentle Reader(s), Your Humble Narrator reports to you from the Nether regions of the Netherlands, currently abroad the good ship Skirnir sailing the river Rhine betwixt and between the towns of Nieuw Lekkerland and Lekkerkerk on our way to dock up at Kinderdijk. Quite the adventure it has been thus far, escorting the Inky Mum through the paces of international travel and visiting with Brother JB and the Warrior Princess in lovely Amsterdam. The cultural offerings have been coming fast and furious, the food and drink has been coming even fasterer and furiouser, and—generally speaking—a lovely time is being had by one and all. Amsterdam is a extraordinarily vibrant and beautiful city—not exactly a news flash—and Bro JB and the WP are prospering, I am glad to say. As for YHN, I have been prospering too, especially today after having achieving that most elusive commodity of international travel, the Full Night's Sleep.
03/24/2016

Greetings, Gentle Reader(s) and welcome to yet another indubitable double dose of that matchless melange of estimable epistemologically erudite euterpian offerings, Matador Playlist. Ask for it by name, accept no substitute. I need not tell you that there is much malice afoot in the land these days, both near and afar. I have opined in some depth regarding the ongoing offensiveness of the current political season on these storied shores, but the dreary drivel being spouted this side of the pond pales in comparison to the latest outbreaks of fundamentalist horror on the other. Words are woefully inadequate at times such as these, but I do have one itemable update for you: Your Humble Narrator will soon be voyaging to the very site of the recent outrages. A trip to the Low Countries is forthcoming in one week's time and I will do my best to report back with news and images from Amsterdam, Brussels, Bruges, and other locales encountered during my two week journey. A new camera (pictured above) has been added to the arsenal, all the better to capture imagery from this rare foray. I am very enthused indeed about my lovely new Olympus PEN-F, a significant step up from the sturdy E-P2 that has been my primary device for the last several years. Stay tuned.
03/15/2016

As I'm sure you're already aware, Gentle Reader(s), the great Sir George Henry Martin passed away last Tuesday at the age of 90 years. To all reports, Sir George's was a life very well lived. He was respected and beloved by a great many people, not the least of whom was a group of four lads from Liverpool whom Martin met at Abbey Road studios in London on June 6, 1962. After he signed the Beatles to EMI's Parlophone label George Martin went on to produce all of the group's albums, save for the last ('Let It Be,' for which he functioned in a production advisory capacity). Beyond his groundbreaking work with the Beatles, Martin was a key figure in the evolution of the professional recording studio from a stuffy, formal laboratory environment (which in Martin's early days still involved studio engineers wearing ties and white lab coats) to a venue for free form sonic experimentation and creativity. There are other producers who emerged from the 1950s and '60s whose names are as well known as those of the artists with whom they worked (Sam Phillips, Quincy Jones, Berry Gordy and Phil Spector), and some artist/producers whose visions for their own compositions incorporated the possibilities of the studio as a primary element (Brian Wilson, Jimmy Page, Todd Rundgren and Prince prominent amongst them), but George Martin was the true revolutionary. Be that as it may, it took time for the full measure of Martin's contributions to become acknowledged: In the Beatles section of the first edition (1976) of the epochal 'Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll' George Martin doesn't even merit a mention.
02/29/2016

Welcome, Gentle Reader(s). As I’m sure you’re very well aware, my last Matador Playlist featuring live (sort of) Grammy Awards blogging went down like a House On Fire so I’m doing again it for the Oscars! Well, to be honest, ‘House On Fire’ might be gilding the lily… ‘House With The Heat Turned Up A Bit Too High’ might be more accurate. Or ‘House With Something On The Stove’? Perhaps ‘House With Something Warming In A Toaster Oven’? Well, you get the picture…   It’s the red carpet pre-show show. Michael Strahan appears backstage at the Oscars wearing one white glove. A spontaneous Michael Jackson tribute? No, apparently it’s so that he can handle an actual Oscar award without besmirching its gold plated magnificence as he chats with the representatives from Pricewaterhouse-Cooper, one of whom (as Strahan notes) looks quite a bit like Matt Damon (with a case of rosacea). Once again, the red carpet features a perky blonde woman (Lara Spencer) towering over an array of much shorter men and women. No, Sylvester Stallone is not standing in a trench. Neither is the diminutive Kevin Hart.   Michael Strahan appears again, sans white glove, with the perpetually stunning Charlize Theron in a fire engine red sheath dress with a plunging neckline. She says the best thing about the Oscars are the backstage hamburgers. Okay, now I’m hungry. Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling are next to be cornered by Strahan, engaging in some awkward sports analogies and ribbing of one another. Russell says ‘Just go with it, man.’ Strahan seems a bit jittery.   Robin Roberts is at the front of the hall with Mark Ruffalo and his lovely wife—the deep plunging neckline seems to be de rigueur tonight and I, for one, have no problem with that. While discussing the film ‘Spotlight’ Mark Ruffalo invokes ‘fellow liberals’ and Robin Roberts can’t end the segment quickly enough. The ‘L’ word! Gadzooks!   Okay, here we go.
02/16/2016

This eagerly anticipated installment of the one-and-only Matador Playlist blogg represents an excursion into unexplored and potentially exciting terrain, Gentle Reader(s): Live (sort of) blogiating from the 58th Annual Grammy Awards, presented on the Tiffany Network, CBS, this very evening. The Grammys are usually held on a Sunday but considering that yesterday was both Valentine's Day and the night that new episodes of Downton Abbey air, the brain trust behind the primo music awards ceremony decided not to compete with the distractions of unbridled shagging that Downton Abbey inevitably inspires and put the Grammys off to the following night. The Dowager Countess of Grantham would doubtlessly approve.   Okay, here we go.
02/11/2016

An election year in the U.S. of A.: A depressing scenario even in the most favorable of circumstances. Election years are the ones when all the crazies not only come tumbling of the American political closet but then parade about waving their crazy banners and proclaiming an alarming assortment of mind-bending agendas to the bafflement and horror of not only their more levelheaded countrymen but the world at large. It's like spending four years peeping through the curtains at your mildly alarming neighbors only to find them rallying in the front yard one morning, heavily armed and proclaiming allegiance to vague, deranged notions regarding the Second Amendment, 'Winning,' racist immigration policies and returning America to some imaginary pre-liberal paradise. Broadcast news of any sort becomes treacherous terrain: You're casually flipping through the channels one day when suddenly—blasta from the pasta!—there's none other than Sarah Palin, draped in some sort of Tea Party chain mail and screeching out a largely incoherent endorsement of Dumb Donald Trump. You're not sure whether to laugh, cry or run screaming into the streets. Even DDT hisself is looking mildly alarmed and baffled. (To Ms. Palin's credit, she gamely trotted out in front of the cameras to deliver her endorsement shortly after her daughter Bristol was knocked up again and her son Track was arrested for drunken assault—doing a great job there, mom!) What to do, what to do? The obvious thing is to pull the curtains tightly shut, restrict your viewing to Downton Abbey and Netflix, turn up BBC Radio 4 slightly louder than usual, consider taking up a new hobby (prayer), and hunker down until election day. Then there is also, as R. Crumb suggests, Despair. Not easy to discern the difference sometimes.
01/16/2016

Not unexpectedly, the first DJ Inky set of 2016 was a David Bowie tribute, beginning to end. What else could one do?  We screened The Man Who Fell To Earth and settled in for six hours of non-stop Bowie and Bowie-associated artists. It was thoroughly enjoyable and not once did anyone suggest that I play anything else—a testament to the greatness, diversity and enduring appeal of the man's prodigious output. A formal Bowie tribute night is scheduled for Wednesday the 27th, but this was my personal salute.
01/14/2016

Sometimes it's difficult to know exactly how much someone means to you and how much impact they've had on your life until they're no longer there. Unlike, say, the Beatles, I can recall a pre-David Bowie world. Therefore, I can say without reservation that the world was a much more interesting place with David Bowie in it. Now, sadly, we are in a post-David Bowie world and I am all too acutely aware of how much he meant to me. It would be cool to be able to relate some sort of direct, personal account of Bowie but, alas, I have none. We were once in the same room together, albeit quite a large room, and some people that I know knew him, rather well as it turns out, but for better or worse I never met the man.
01/12/2016

Ah, dear and Gentle Reader(s), I am returned from an extended hiatus from the posting of ruminations and lists of play upon these pages. The reasons for this extended silencio are various and sundry, but included amongst them are a) travel, b) more travel, c) distraction, d) physical malady, and e) (most dreadfully) f) deficit of inspiration. The travel is not a problem but whenever I think I'm going to get some writing done on the road I typically find that I am sorely mistooked. That's where the distraction comes into it—too much other stuffe to do and think about. The holidays snuck into the mix somewhere around the 25th of December as they are wont to do, and upon that very selfsame evening, right smack in the middle of Birthday o' Jebus observations, a rather dreadful throbbing began to manifest itself in the region of an upper right pre-molar, the lower portion of which had decided to bust a move for the Great Outdoors back in September (quite possibly inspired by a fairly dull Keith Richards documentary I had been watching on Netflix). The throb evolved into a mindbendingly dreadful pain that had Your Humble Narrator stumbling and mumbling about in a humble little mumble circle in his living room, groaning in agony—a state of affairs that continued intermittently throughout Jebus Birthday weekend. Timing, as is oft noted, is everything, and in this case the timing could scarcely have been worse. I survived till Monday when good Doctor Doug Reid was able to extract the offending article with dispatch, ending my holiday weekendus horribilis. It is said that if it don't kill you it makes you stronger and I am feeling quite strong at the moment.