Monthly Archives: April 2010

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2010 Summer movie preview

Summer may not officially begin until the end of June, but in Hollywood it starts in early May. This year it’s May 7, to be exact, when Iron Man 2 hits theaters and could well top the opening weekend record set by The Dark Knight a couple of years ago.

Following are the ten films I’m most looking forward to this summer. As always, this list is merely a snapshot of my thinking right now and could change as reviews roll in… though I’ll watch the films at the top of this list regardless of how well they’re received.

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Song of the Day #646: ‘Double Dutch Bus’ – Frankie Smith

Four of the five songs I’m featuring this week are by black artists, which I find interesting considering all the talk in recent years about how white America has adopted black musical culture.

That’s certainly true today, but maybe it’s not such a new phenomenon. Maybe it’s always been true.

Don’t get me wrong… I was listening to Phil Collins in 1981 right alongside Frankie Smith’s ‘Double Dutch Bus.’ But the songs I most remember from those years are by black folk. And I’m not even including Michael Jackson, who actually was black back then.

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Song of the Day #645: ‘White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)’ – Grandmaster Melle Mel

Last Fall, I spent a month counting down my favorite songs from the 80s, highlighting a batch of tunes that were ubiquitous on MTV and helped shape my creative awareness during my formative second decade.

But recently I realized that I left out a group of songs from early in the decade that had a big impact on my tween self, well before the word “tween” was invented. These are tracks released between 1981 and 1984, when I was between 9 and 12 years old. This week I’ll feature five of those songs that transport me back to my elementary school days.

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Song of the Day #644: ‘Hazel’ – Bob Dylan

Planet Waves is the first album I’ve played of the five I bought in preparation for these Dylan Weekends and I hope its quality is indicative of what I can expect of the rest. It’s fun to hear “new” music from an artist I’ve been listening to for more than 20 years.

Planet Waves certainly doesn’t crack my top tier of Dylan albums, and it would probably struggle to find a spot in the tier just below that, but it already sits comfortably alongside a group of albums in the good-to-great category (assume the top tier are “classics” and the second tier are “great to excellent”… yes, I’ll eventually get around to ranking all of these albums in order… and yes, I’m a total nerd… let’s move on).

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Song of the Day #643: ‘Forever Young’ – Bob Dylan

When I started this Dylan Weekend series and decided to dedicate posts to each of Bob Dylan’s albums chronologically, I knew I was going in somewhat ill-prepared. I own more albums by Dylan than by any other single artist or band in my collection (Elvis Costello is a close second) but I don’t own them all.

Already I’ve covered three of the albums I don’t own — Self Portrait, Dylan and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. But one of those is a soundtrack and the other two are notoriously mediocre, and primarily cover albums besides. So I don’t feel all that bad glossing over them on the blog.

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