Apr 032013
 

They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday!

Electric, Richard Thompson’s newest album, followed the pattern of all his releases – first-rate material, critical hosannas, sales to his devoted core following, and no long-deserved breakthrough to the masses. Having been through this for four and a half decades now, he’d be forgiven for growing complacent with this level of acceptance; instead, he continues to take chances, and his playing and songwriting continue to stand astride a very tall mountain with very little room for others to join him at the peak. Continue reading »

May 152012
 

They Say It’s Your Birthday celebrates an artist’s special day with other people singing his or her songs. Let others do the work for a while. Happy birthday!

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste De La Salle Eno turns 64 today. Here are some reasons we will still need him and feed him: 1) He co-founded Roxy Music and proved you could be flashier and suaver than Bryan Ferry; 2)He invented ambient music; 3) He produced the best albums by U2, Devo, and Talking Heads, not to mention his involvement with David Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy; 4) His Oblique Strategies cards are to writer’s block what the Salk vaccine was to polio; 5) The noise Windows 95 makes when it opens? He wrote that; 6) He shows absolutely zero signs of stopping. Continue reading »