The question of the upside and downside of a monopoly has been around a good 200 years. They still ask that question, yet monopolies still exist, still flourish and still have their supporters and detractors. First off – what’s a monopoly? A monopoly (from Greek μόνος, mónos, ‘single, alone’ and
A very busy week for news, the one ending this March 17th 1991. President Bush described U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf in a news conference as “the finest combat force ever assembled,” thanked them for their “courage and resolve,” and promised they would I be coming home “soon.” “The
For an hour this morning over to the Hammersmith Odeon for a set by Level 42 from May 31, 1986. It occurred to me there was a flurry of Jazz-Funk bands springing up in the mid-1980s – along with everything else going on at the time. Level 42 had a
Covering rare performances by familiar figures this weekend. The music of Arthur Honegger as played by Radio Orchestra Beromünster conducted by Ernest Ansermet in this May 7, 1944 broadcast. The work at hand is Honegger’s Battements du Monde Radiophonische Dichtung für Solo, Chor, Sprecher und Orchester H 176 written in
Long before the days of freeform, sessions, endless fund-drives and NPR, almost every college in America had its own radio station – run by students as part of its curriculum. Some you could only hear on campus and some you could hear all over the state. Radio in the 1940s
Some late Big Band this weekend. A set by Harry James and his New Band, recorded at the Hollywood Palladium on November 27, 1959. Even though the acknowledged Golden Age of Big Bands was long gone, there were glimmers that it was still around, still grabbing audiences and still occasionally
Okay – something different tonight. Four songs by the Hal Herzon Septet, all recorded for the Standard Transcription Company in 1945. There is precious little information on Hal Herzon, aside from an obit that ran in Daily Variety from March 25, 2003 and really nothing else. Certainly no photos (hence
Part of American culture; forever the voyeur. Being the perennial fly on the wall, the eavesdropper, the casual leering bystander. Before the days when Reality TV took over and rendered the Soap Opera somewhat obsolete, it had a long and healthy life – celebrating the chaste and the prurient –
It’s March 2025 – cold, harsh reality. World is crazy. People are nuts. You’d like to be somewhere else. You have this mind, and it wanders. It lands right in the middle of August 1968. Was that your last good year? Maybe. It’s the one you swore you’d remember forever,
Maisie Peters in concert from Hordern Pavilion in Sydney on March 21, 2024 – recorded by the venerable Triple J radio. When I ran a 2023 concert by Maisie Peters in December of that year, I made a prediction she’d become a household name in a very short time. Not
