Nostalgia can be a narcotic. Lately I’ve been going through the accumulated evidence of 50 + years and wondering why I kept it even as each bit triggers memories I’m glad to have. Do I really need this gew-gaw? This piece of paper? This book or album? Part of me can’t bear to part with any of it, but the practical side of me is starting to sort and allocate in anticipation of the time I just have no more room, no more interest, and no further use. I’m already cutting back on acquiring more. I have enough music on my shelves to last another couple of decades, by which time I could start all over.…
Category: Music
Random Bits
No plan here, just thoughts. It’s Sunday as I begin writing this, second day for me of a four-day weekend. Timing.
Lack of attention bedevils me. I have things to do, a wide variety, and I get befuddled by which I should pay most attention. It matters because I end up scattering my attention widely and so get little done in each endeavor. Some of my friends understand this, but not all.
This morning I got out of bed (I hesitate to say “awoke” because I wouldn’t classify my condition that way) and stumbled through my morning routines. Making coffee is so embedded in my brain that I think if I sleep-walked that is one of the things I would do.…
A Note On Personal Taste
I had a conversation yesterday with a coworker about music that ended up going into some places I didn’t like. We have these faux clashes from time to time, they’re always–always–done with great good humor and the self-awareness that we’re just, you know, funnin’. But this time I actually found myself getting a bit worked up.
It was about music. He took exception to my categorical dismissal of punk as essentially garbage. Fair enough. Superlatives are always wrong. Do I hate punk? Hate is a strong word. I loathe it. I find its self-justifications back in the day one with all anti-intellectual movements. …
A Message From Florida
For anyone who can spot it and decipher it. (Yes, this is frivolous, yes, it was fun, yes, sometimes I have no deep thoughts.)
I put up a new gallery of images from our trip.
One of the things we did since returning was go see Santana at the Fox. Stunning show. Carlos has always been 
one of my favorite musicians. His sound…well, I can’t get enough of his guitar sometimes. But this night. My ghod, what a performance! I’ve seen Santana more than a couple of times and they have never been better. If I never see another major show like this, I would, I think, be content. …
A Few Moves
A bit rough in the beginning…that’s what happens when you aren’t quite sure where it’s going…but then, maybe, it picks up.
Just fooling around a bit.
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Concerts!
So there’s a meme going around on FaceBook about concerts. Basically, list 10 concerts, 9 of which you have actually been to and 1 you have not. Your friends are supposed to guess which one is the false claim.
I love music. I mean, if I could I would have a soundtrack backing my daily movements. I’ve been playing an instrument, either keyboard or guitar, since I was nine, and I have been buying albums (as opposed to 45 rpm singles) since I was fourteen. I went to my first honest-to-gosh-wow concert when I was thirteen (I’ve written about that before and will not repeat it here, because it was an anomaly) and started regularly attending at fifteen.…
Lake
I should be working on the short story I’ve been struggling with, but instead I want to say a few words about art and talent and memory.
Greg Lake of King Crimson and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and (briefly) Asia has died. He was 69 and he had been fighting cancer.
The first time I heard a piece of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, it was Knife Edge, from their first album, and a bolt went through my brain. This was the “other” band that mattered to me–suddenly and thoroughly, the cadences, the depth, the compositional holism, the instrumental proficiency, the temerity of three young guys to challenge Bartok, all of this displaced the light-hearted, Bazooka Joe triviality of so-called pop music that saturated the airwaves a the time. …
K.C. 2016
Worldcon is over, I am home, weary and pumped and amazed and frazzled. So much happened, it is difficult to sort it out and deal with it cogently.
This may have been the best worldcon experience I have ever had. Barring the first one, way back in 1984, in L.A., when Donna and I roamed around gawking at all the startling stuff and sitting in panels listening to the writers we were reading and finding books in the dealers’ room Walden and Dalton just didn’t stock, the worldcons in between have been mixed bags for us, often fraught with my anxieties of trying to become a pro writer and feeling alternately despairing and enthusiastic. …
A Commemorative Moment
Passing of Giants
I cannot adequately tell you how I feel right now. My insides are being roiled by a gigantic spoon.
Chris Squire, bass player, co-founder of in my estimate one of the greatest musical groups to ever grace a stage, has died.
A brief report of the particulars can be read here.
I have been listening to, following, collecting, and appreciating YES since I first heard them late one night on my first stereo, a track being played as representative of an “underappreciated” band. That status did not last long. A year or two later, they were a major force in what has been called Progressive Rock, a label with some degree of oxymoronicalness in that, not a decade before their advent, all rock was progressive.…