As a fan of a wide variety of popular (and not-so-popular) music from the 1950s (and sometimes even earlier) up through the present, one of my bucket list projects for years has been to put together a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. At some point I decided that, once I got around to figuring that out, I could put it out on a blog, for the infinitesimally small proportion of the Internet world that might be interested. So, here we are. While the Top 100 will be a major focus, I also plan to post on a variety of other musical (and occasionally non-musical) topics, in which you may or may not be interested. (If a particular posting doesn’t ring your bell, you’re only a few clicks away from a dancing cat video on YouTube.)

Friday, July 1, 2022

Gov. Youngkin says he’ll sign ‘any bill ... to protect life’

If you live in Virginia, be afraid. Be very afraid.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/29/youngkin-abortion-life-conception/

 

Thursday, June 30, 2022

We must protect life from conception until the moment of birth!

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Steely Dan – Wolf Trap, 6/26/2022

Prime Orchestra, Row F, Seat 119. The Filene Center added two more aisles over the winter, dividing the “Front Orchestra” area into three roughly equal-sized sections. I was six rows behind the pit, in the middle section on the right-hand aisle. The view was great, and it was easy to get in and out. Downsides: there was a surprising volume of other people needing to get in and out past me, and one of the round lights at the edge of the aisle floor was right next to me, and bright enough to be annoying.

 

The bucket list is complete – I have now seen each of my 12 favorite musical acts live. Interestingly enough, I have seen 5 of the 12 exactly once, while the other 7 I’ve caught on at least 4 occasions.

 

As I expected, the show was professionally done throughout, with high levels of musicianship and impeccable staging. Donald Fagen cuts an interesting figure behind the keyboard, with mannerisms that reminded me a lot of Ray Charles. At least for me, his vocals tended to get buried underneath the band – not sure whether this had anything to do with my aging ears and/or my location in the audience. (On the other hand, their female vocal trio, the “Danettes”, came through loud and clear.)

 

The first hour or so of the 110-minute set featured a few of my personal favorites (“Hey Nineteen”, “Black Friday”, “Kid Charlemagne”), along with a couple of the more meandering cuts from Aja and a few selections that seemed to be deliberately obscure – most notably, for the first time on this tour, “Any Major Dude Will Tell You”. Things really picked up when the Danettes handled the vocals on “Dirty Work”, followed by rousing renditions of “Bodhisattva”, “Keep That Same Old Feeling” (a cover of a track by the Crusaders that was used to finish the band intros), “Peg”, and finally “My Old School”. “Reelin’ In The Years” was a perfect choice for the first encore, and an instrumental take on Joe Williams’ “A Man Ain’t Supposed To Cry” ended the performance.

 

Setlist

 

The evening opened musically with an impressive 45-minute set of jazz by the Dave Stryker Trio, with Stryker on guitar, Jared Gold on the organ, and McClenty Hunter handling drums. Prior to that, there was a short burst of rain just before 6:00; fortunately, I had made it to the Associates Pavilion for dinner just before the heavens opened. Following the show, I didn’t make it out to the parking lot all that quickly, but I somehow managed to get out of the parking lot in under five minutes, and arrived back home just an hour after the music stopped.