(One in a series of posts about Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine & What Matters In The End.) In 1991 Dr. Bill Thomas took over as medical director of Chase Memorial Nursing Home in New Ber…

Emily Dickinson’s Civil War-era poem “Hope Is The Thing With Feathers” provides the lyrics to the title track of Rhiannon Giddens’ new album. Giddens herself wrote the melod…

(One in a series of posts about Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine & What Matters In The End.) “(W)hen Keren Brown Wilson…built her first assisted living home for the aged in Ore…

“If you want it,You can have it,All you gotta do,Is just reach out and grab it….” Ray LaMontagne’s chart-topping 2024 single, “Step Into Your Power” sounds like …

(One in a series of posts about Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine & What Matters In The End.) “As fewer of us are struck dead out of the blue, most of us will spend significant period…

We’re in the midst of an old-fashioned three-day nor’easter here at MassCommons World Headquarters and it sounds almost nothing like Frederic Chopin’s “Raindrop Prelude&#822…

Thanks to “Maybe God Is Tryin’ To Tell You Somethin'” from the 1985 musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, we have an answer to the question, “What wou…

YouTube video by Money Unplugged with Chris Hill

Only an early death (at 38) kept George Gershwin, born this day in 1898, from a decades-long career as one of America’s great composers. Here at this little blog, we like to think he’d …

Listen carefully to the lyrics of Rufus’ 1976 hit, “Sweet Thing”, and you’ll want to get as far away as possible from the narrator because there is no way this romance ends …

Tom Morello’s “Arm The Homeless”-emblazoned custom-made ice-blue Stratocaster is perhaps the most well-known descendant of the “This Machine Kills Fascists” guitar Woo…

Happy Bi-Visibility Day to all who celebrate. America was not ready for Living Colour’s blunt-talking, hard-rocking “Bi” when it was released in 1993. Now, 33 years later, a lot h…

Josh Ostrander’s dog died and that death inspired”Sweet Forever”, the title track to Mondo Cozmo’s new album. “I wanted to write something for him that I could actuall…

Do you remember the 21st night of September? If you do, then you remember Phil Bailey’s gorgeous falsetto, Maurice White’s light, rock-steady (and left-handed!) drumming, brother Verdin…

According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac (what? you think we rely on AI here at this little blog?) the fall equinox doesn’t occur until tomorrow (8:04 pm, to be precise), which makes this …

You can see (at about 5:47) that Rev. E. Dewey Smith is ready to start preaching…but the Holy Spirit moves in a different direction as his congregation wasn’t ready to leave off singing…

Today at this little blog we’re celebrating the birth of pianist/composer/bandleader Lovie Austin 139 years ago today. Boomers understandably tend to think of the post-WW II explosion of bebo…

R. E. M.’s “The One I Love” is in the pantheon of creepy, misinterpreted “love” songs by famous 1980s rockers. (Also included are “Every Breath You Take” b…

Michael Franti & Spearhead’s 2020 single went to #1 on Billboard’s AAA (Adult Album Alternative) chart for good reason. It resonated deeply with listeners in their 40s and 50s who m…

I once knew a preacher (a man not shy about proclaiming his views on a wide range of matters) whose standard last word to disputes–whether social, political, economic, or doctrinal–was …

“…it just comes pouring down.” Dire Straits 1982 deep cut “It Never Rains” is what Bob Dylan would have sounded like if he hadn’t started out as a folksinger, an…

(One in an occasional Monday series of Felix Mendelssohn’s Lieder Ohne Worte (Songs Without Words).) There’s a lot going on in the 2 1/2 minutes of Felix Mendelssohn’s “Opus 53. N…

This 1977 clip of The Richard Smallwood Singers performing Smallwood’s “Glorify The Lord” is old and faded, but there’s nothing old and faded about how they sing, how their …

There are several advantages to writing your own songs if you’re in someone else’s band: satisfying your creative impulses, earning publishing and performing royalties, getting to play …

(One in a series of posts about Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine & What Matters In The End.) For most of human history, Gawande argues, the typical person’s health plotted over the c…

You can listen to Ben Harper’s bluesy, bouncy 2002 deep cut “Everything” as if you’re the narrator or as if you’re the subject of the song. Either way, it’ll war…

(One in a series of posts about Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine & What Matters In The End.) We live, Gawande says, in an age of the “veneration of the independent self.” The p…

Best non-Blood, Sweat & Tears Blood Sweat & Tears song ever. “Great God in heaven, you know I love you.” #IdesOfMarch

British singer RAYE just released a self-cover of her new banger, “Joy”, with sisters Amma and Absolutely, and I am here for it. “I may cry through the night, but my joy comes in …

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Baker Street Irregulars, the oldest and best known of the hundreds of Sherlock Holmes societies in the United States. Their primary pastime is playing “the G…

(One in a series of posts about Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine & What Matters In The End.) In the Introduction to Being Mortal, Dr. Gawande sets the stage for the years-long exploration …

Okay, I get the symbolism of the ever-rising pyramid of nearly nude, model-perfect, writhing bodies beneath a Madonna-esque bullet bra-clad Kylie Minogue in the video for her 2010 global dance-pop …

I’ve learned over the years there are people I should take seriously when they speak, no matter what I might have thought beforehand. So if Brittany Howard has reunited Alabama Shakes (on tou…

The Celestial Choir’s “Stand On The Word”, began its recorded life as the opening track on a noncommercial 1982 album created by and pressed for the First Baptist Church of Crown …

Of all the recent deaths of towering musicians, Cassandra Wilson’s earlier this week at 70 hit hardest at this little blog. Wilson was possessed of an amazing voice and an even more astoundin…

“…for picking me up, dusting me off,Making me feel like I’m living again.” In 1973, no sound was better than the Philadelphia sound*, and no song better captured the essence…

Melba Moore’s 1976 disco hit “This Is It” works both ways as a love song: Find someone to love the way she’s singing about. Find someone who loves you the way she sounds. &#…

The Last Dinner Party’s 2023 single, “Sinner”, is just bursting with an intoxicating blend of…well…just about everything: sex, religion, queerness, scathing guitar lic…

Louis Prima came by his showmanship and swing credentials honestly. He was born in New Orleans and grew up in Treme, just blocks from Congo Square at a time when Italian and Blacks lived cheek by j…

Listen to Money Unplugged with Chris Hill. The new podcast from long-time host and executive producer of Motley Fool Money podcast and radio show.

(One in a series of posts about the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and its consequences.) Longtime followers of this little blog may recall that after the 2016 presidential election I saw parallels bet…

Noah Kahan’s “End Of August” has been slotted onto the schedule for this date since it first came to our attention early this summer. It’s hard to think of a songwriter more…

There is a surprising number of Christians intent on and quite vocal about defining the limits of what constitutes “proper” worship of God. It’s got to be in the right language, o…

“Now’s The Time” to celebrate Charlie Parker, on the occasion of the 126th anniversary of his birth. Parker grew up in the midst of Kansas City’s thriving and highly competi…

In the closing chapters of The War Before The War, Andrew Delbanco argues: “For the crusade against slavery, the fugitive slave law was a godsend. In the free states, it expanded the citizenr…

“If you looked at my life,And see what I’ve seen….” Outsourcing to the magnificent Tressie McMillan Cottom for commentary on Mary J. Blige’s 1994 title track, “M…

Joel Strangis’ terrific 1999 biography, Lewis Hayden & The War Against Slavery, is out of print, so you’re most likely to find it in the YA section of your local library, next to ot…

If you’re wondering about all the fuss over Dolly Parton’s death and how it came to be that everyone from Donald Trump to the Democratic Socialists of America is united in grief, Dolly&…

There are days when Bobby McFerrin’s 1988 “Simple Pleasures”–a relentlessly cheery wisp of a song, with its a capella overdubbing and body percussion–is the last thing…

It matters that Eric Burton wrote Black Pumas’ 2019 single “Colors” while he was also leading worship at a church because “Colors”, like so many great church songs, is…