by aaron | Mar 30, 2015 | Essays, reviews
I’ve been on a bit of a mystery kick lately with several friends. We’ve read through some classic American tough-guy fiction—Dashiel Hammet’s The Maltese Falcon, Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye—and contrasted the books...
by aaron | Mar 17, 2015 | reviews
On a bright warm afternoon last summer I walked into a local produce stand to purchase a melon. That was all I needed, one single solitary melon. I made my choice, and fruit in hand was headed toward the check-out when a song came over the radio. The intro piano...
by aaron | Feb 17, 2015 | reviews
Seven or eight years ago you could show up at a venue in Seattle to hear your friends’ band play, and sometimes the opener would be a lanky young singer-songwriter doing what the trade requires—picking a guitar and singing songs that only a few folks in the room...
by aaron | Oct 29, 2014 | reviews
My freshman year of college, at a small school in the middle of some corn fields in Indiana, I was placed in a room directly next to the RA’s. Some might consider this troubling, as if the presence of the nosy, finger-wagging RA’s would limit my nascent...
by aaron | Jun 16, 2014 | reviews
Today we’re taking a break from more serious matters to enjoy a trip down the musical memory lane. We’re going to travel back to the mid-1960’s when rock-&-roll was at a bit of a standstill. The music had died on February 3, 1959, and it took...
by aaron | May 10, 2014 | reviews
On this day in 1999, Shel Silverstein died. If you were ever a child, or the caregiver of one, odds are good you know Silverstein’s many poems and drawings from books such as The Giving Tree, Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, and others. To this day...