"I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don't have to." Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you was*?" Satchel Paige (1906-1982)

"By the time you're eighty years old you've learned everything. You only have to remember it." George Burns (1896-1996)

"The wiser mind mourns less for what age takes away than what it leaves behind." William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

"You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred." Woody Allen (1935- )

“Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.” – Chili Davis.

Are you ready? Ready for action? Ready for… whatever? I hope you are, because when opportunity knocks you better at least have your drawers on when you answer the door. They say success is when preparation meets opportunity, so you best be ready to jump when the light goes on.

This sassy stop-time number was written by the Mozart of the blues, bassist Willie Dixon for the one and only Muddy Waters, and with Little Walter’s chromatic harp chords chugging along behind the legendary frontman, it’s one of the most invigorating concoctions ever recorded.

Muddy is in full command of his ripeness, and when he declares that he’s been drinking TNT and smoking dynamite, I believe him. He’s ready to fight, fuck, Rock n roll - or, maybe all three at the same time. “I’m ready for you - I hope you ready for me,” he warns, and that ain’t no mere boast.

Kinky Friedman, the singer, songwriter, humorist and sometime politician who with his band, the Texas Jewboys, developed an ardent following among alt-country music fans with songs like “They Ain’t Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore” — and whose biting cultural commentary earned him comparisons with Will Rogers and Mark Twain — died on Thursday at his ranch near Austin, Texas. He was 79.

The writer Larry Sloman, a close friend, said the cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease.

Mr. Friedman occupied a singular spot on the fringes of American popular culture, alongside acts like Jello Biafra, the Dead Milkmen and Mojo Nixon. He leered back at the mainstream with songs that blended vaudeville, outlaw country and hokum, a bawdy style of novelty music typified by tracks like “Asshole From El Paso” and “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You.”
He toured widely in the 1970s, with his band and solo, including on the second leg of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue in 1976. He performed on “Saturday Night Live” and at the Grand Ole Opry — Mr. Friedman claimed to be the first Jewish musician to do so (though in fact others, including the fiddler Gene Lowinger, had beat him to it).

Another performance, recorded for the TV show “Austin City Limits,” was reported to be so profane that it has never been aired.

In the 1980s, after the band broke up, Mr. Friedman turned to writing detective novels, using the same casual irreverence that he brought to the stage in books like “Kill Two Birds and Get Stoned” (2001) and “God Bless John Wayne” (1995)

Yet there was a surprising earnestness behind his weirdness. Mr. Friedman founded a ranch for rescue animals. He and his sister, Marcie, ran Echo Hill Camp, which they inherited from their parents and which they offered, free of charge, to children of parents killed while serving in the U.S. military.
He spent an increasing amount of time on his ranch. The Echo Hill camp closed in 2013, but three years ago, he and his sister revived it, this time with a focus on helping the children of fallen service members as well as the children of refugee families from Afghanistan.

“There was a volunteer who fixed a water heater who I went over to thank,” he told Texas Highways magazine in 2023. “He said, ‘You’re welcome. I’m doing it for Jesus.’ I told him, ‘I’m doing it for Moses.’”

Clay Risen
New York Times

Back in the day there was a commercial for a pain reliever called Anacin, which was so psychotically hilarious that its catch phrase instantly became a “viral” meme, way before that term was invented. Even as 10 year olds, we would go around screaming: “Mother, PLEASE, I’d rather do it myself!!” Imitating the emotionally wrecked housewife in the ad. Nowadays, such an outburst would probably result in a Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, or Ativan prescription.

Jo Ann Campbell and the folks at Cameo Parkway records wasted no daylight in capitalizing on this phenomenon when they created this winking homage. The singer growls at her mother when the poor parent is only trying to keep her little virgin from getting pregnant. But, the teen has other ideas: She’s out to learn about sex the old fashioned way (just like mom did) - and, when you see videos of Ms. Campbell, “The Blonde Bombshell” you’ll understand why there was to be no containing that character’s animal energy.

“I wasn’t bound to a style,” Al Kooper has said. He was talking about his guitar playing but just as easily could have been talking about the totality of Al Kooper, songwriter, musician, singer, producer, band director. “If anything, I was known for being in the right place at the right time and playing the right thing.” Kooper has been at the heart of rock & roll’s time/space continuum for much of its history.

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes emerged from the New Jersey Shore in 1974. Though they carried a significant influence (and some key personnel) from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, the Jukes evolved as more of a white R&B horn band in the Memphis tradition embodied by Stax Records. Organized by singer John “Southside Johnny” Lyon, guitarist and songwriter Steve Van Zandt (who decamped for the E Street Band in 1975 but continued to produce, manage, and write songs for the Jukes), and Richie “La Bamba” Rosenberg, the band is well known for its high-energy live shows and no-holds-barred songs.

The Jukes’ brand of raucous soul, roots-tinged rock, and bluesy reverie has flourished across the band’s long career. Rolling Stone named Hearts of Stone one of the top 100 albums of the 1970s and ’80s.

This is the story of a love song that sings from beyond the grave.

Lovin’ You started life as a lullaby for baby Maya Rudolph, the child of singer Minnie Riperton and songwriter Richard Rudolph. Stevie Wonder, who co-produced the record, plays the gorgeous electronic keyboard accompaniment. It was a late-entry addition to MInnie’s solo album Perfect Angel, and the baby oriented lyrics had to be adapted to make it more about romantic love. But the gentle feeling of bliss it conveys is a perfect rendering of maternal devotion, and to insure the communication of its original intent Minnie chants: “Maya, Maya, Maya, Maya” at the end - (a secret message to the future), before the record fades out.

Four years later Minnie Riperton was dead from breast cancer, and young Maya was deprived of her mother’s earthly presence. But her song of maternal love plays on.

At the time of its release, Lovin’ You went to the top of the charts, buoyed by Minnie’s extraordinary range, showcasing an unearthly cascade of descending notes. Listening to the song 50 years on, the composition, with its edenic landscape of ethereal chords and birdsong, and the voice of a perfect angel at the center - is the personification of a Sunny Song.

February 18th of this year would have been Lee Marvin's 100th birthday.

ROGER EBERT'S 1973 REVIEW OF "THE ICEMAN COMETH"

"There isn't a bad performance in the film, but there are three of such greatness they mesmerize us. The best is by the late Robert Ryan, as Larry, and this is possibly the finest performance of his career. There is such wisdom and sadness in his eyes, and such pain in his rejection of the boy Don (who may possibly be his own son), that he makes the role almost tender despite the language O'Neill gives him. It would be a tribute to a distinguished career if Ryan were nominated posthumously for an Academy Award.

Lee Marviv, as Hickey, has a more virtuoso role: He plays a salesman who has been coming to Harry's saloon for many years to have a "periodical drunk." This time he's on the wagon, he says, because he's found peace. We discover his horrible peace when he confesses to the murder. Marvin has recently been playing in violent action movies that require mostly that he look mean; here he is a tortured madman hidden beneath a true believer.

I also liked old Fredric March as Harry Hope. He's a pathetic pixie who tolerates his customers for the security they give him. To be the proprietor of a place like this is, at least, better than being a customer. But not much better. And so for four hours we live in these two rooms and discover the secrets of these people, and at the end we have gone deeper, seen more, and will remember more, than with most of the other movies of our life."

Harry Nilsson was a man in a hurry. There’s no time, people! Life is happening now, and if you don’t act fast and grab it, you’ll be outta luck. Dead at 52, the former Wunderkind, one of Rock’s most innovative song stylists, exited this earthly realm, having burned out his candle from both ends - in terms of life, work, and alcohol consumption - but, thankfully, he left behind a clutch of living monuments to his originality.

This song started life as a B-side to the magisterial Without You, whose soaring vocal allegedly caused Harry to burst a hemorrhoid. He never did anything half-way. And, almost 40 years later, it re-emerged as the musical fulcrum for Natasha Lyonne’s zany existential Netflix series Russian Doll, causing a reported 3,300 percent jump in Spotify streams. It seems you can’t keep a good song down, and every time Lyonne’s character re-awakens, Harry’s ear worm reanimates, winding her back up - a bobbing apple in the enigmatic tub of time.

So, you got something to do? Do it now; don’t hesitate! Make that phone call; say what you need to say. Tempus Fugit!