Words and Music

From the Vocal Vault Dept .: We’re traveling back to 1985, when I was still finding my feet as a music critic, and a brief review I wrote of...

AS A LIFE-LONG INSOMNIAC, I grew up dependent on overnight radio listening to ease the struggle to get to sleep. But you know me. I sought c...

THAT BRIGHT PINK FISH became a centerpiece of our diet, its health benefits aggressively promoted, its resultant appeal so great that it eve...

I BEGAN MY cabaret-style performing in duet with Tom Savoy, a brilliant singer-composer-pianist whom I met in 1980. We discovered a shared l...

From the Food Vault Dept.: Metroland magazine published a “Best of” issue at the end of every year – or the beginning of the subsequent one...

 We're back on stage! Malcolm Kogut and I will tread the boards at Steamer No. 10 Theatre (500 Western Avenue, Albany, NY) at 7 PM on Ne...

From the Cookbook Shelf Dept .: Every December, for many years, Metroland magazine would court advertisers by putting out buying guides. As ...

EVER CONTEMPLATED “CHUCKING IT ALL” and moving to a farm? Shrugging off the heavy mantle of living and working in the corporate world in ord...

TRY TO RECALL a dinner or other social event at which you felt entranced, uplifted. You either were falling in love or listening to a fascin...

It’s not as if we were pandemic-demoralized; far from it. We’ve learned to live reclusively and are quite happy in this social cocoon. Howev...

From the Theater Vault Dept. : Back in 1984, when the University at Albany had a theater department of some standing, they offered an ambiti...

Guest Blogger Dept .: We have heard your cries: “More Ade! More Ade!” And here he is, with one of the longer fables he was pleased to write ...

WHICH ARTIST IS BEST? Which album? Which movie? The lamentable practice of ranking artistic achievements one against the other has boomed in...

IF IT WOULD BE POSSIBLE for a virtuoso reedman to step out of a jazz 78 in a kind of “Purple Rose of Cairo” move, that person would be clari...

SO DISGUSTING AND PERVASIVE is the odor of hog waste that a researcher who was hired to take measurements of particulate evidence in and aro...

TENOR SAX ICON SCOTT HAMILTON seems to lead as relaxed a life as his playing suggests. He’s based in Florence, Italy, playing festivals and ...

WHAT’S MOST REMARKABLE about Jonathan Ward’s Excavated Shellac collection – a project he began on his website and which now has been issued...

MOSAIC RECORDS’ NEW COLLECTION of jazz sessions from the Black & White label nominally covers 1942-49, but a couple of Petrillo-led musi...

IN AUGUST 2022, the US Department of Agriculture released a new draft rule which they insist will bring organic egg and livestock companies ...

Guest Blogger Dept.: As we near the end of summer, let’s remind ourselves that this year’s disastrous attempts at muscling into what passes...