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The tragic sacking of Iraqi national treasures (by its own people) notwithstanding, our military has proved itself once again to be almost unbelievably robust, efficient AND ethical in its handling of the three week war in Iraq. The question now is no longer can our military live up to our …

Dini & Bone's comic tale of talking armadillos and mushroom bouffants.

Reviews MICHIKO KAKUTANI in the NY Times: Mr. Ferguson pointedly adds, however, that it is the United States, not Britain, that is “capable of playing an imperial role” in the world today. He notes that America’s own history – freeing itself from the British Empire – has made it wary …

Reviews Deano in Blogcritics: “It is personality that drives McCullough’s vision of Rome and the Romans within. Her vivid portraits of Marius, Sulla, Julius Caesar, Brutus, Anthony, Cato and the countless others that inhabit her pages, are highly realistic, almost evocative personalities, reflecting the daily lives, ambitions, philosophies, obsessions, egos, …

My brother ran across this – I think it represents my own attitude rather well, and has a lot more weight coming from Pat Metheny: Kenny G is not a musician I really had much of an opinion about at all until recently. There was not much about the way …

Whitney Houston’s December TV interview with Diane Sawyer (“crack is whack”) led many to conclude that her relationship with reality is somewhat, um, tenuous. But following tepid sales of her latest album, she is returning to the tube to try to get something going. Per her website: April 17, 2003 …

Quick – what blues performer had the most pop and R&B hits between the mid ’50 and the mid ’60s? It isn’t one of the “King brothers” (B.B., Albert, Freddie – no actual relation), or Muddy or any of the Chess Records champions: it was Jimmy Reed. While Muddy Waters …

As we have mentioned before, this is the 50th anniversary of the seminal Chicago blues and jazz label Delmark, and there is many a celebration in the offing. But I think of no better celebration than to talk about a Delmark release that is considered by many to be one …

Another great release from ’90 under the contemporary folk umbrella (see Amy Correia) – and covering some of the same rootsy terrain as Steve Earle – is Bolsa de Agua from Austin’s Gourds. They throw in the veritable kitchen sink, drawing from bluegrass punk, Tex-Mex, roots rock, Cajun, western, and …

While I was rooting around in the year 2000 thinking about Steve Earle’s Transcendental Blues, I ran across another great record from that year that hasn’t received enough attention, Amy Correia’s Carnival Love. Correia, the daughter of a barber from the small town of Lakeville in southeastern Massachusetts, kind of …