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Song of the Day #718: ‘Torn & Frayed’ – The Rolling Stones

Every so often, the entertainment industry seizes on an anniversary as an excuse to roll out a new version of some classic album or movie, prompting all of the entertainment magazines and websites to launch their own retrospectives. No doubt it is all in the interest of making a lot of money off of a gullible public’s nostalgia.

And I’m here to say that it’s a wonderful thing.

Last year it was The Beatles CD reissues, which weren’t even tied to an anniversary but rather to the release of the Rock Band video game featuring the Fab Four’s music. I, like millions of other fans, plopped down lots of money to buy up new versions of albums I already owned because these sounded a whole lot better.

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Shrek Forever After

It’s been more than a month since I saw Shrek Forever After, the fourth film in the lucrative Shrek franchise, and as I’ve put off writing this review the details have receded in my mind. And that’s sort of a given, I guess, with a film like this. It’s not meant to stick with you.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Mindless escapism is often just what the doctor ordered. And when it comes to childrens’ movies, you can do far worse than the Shrek films, which at least serve up some legitimate laughs for the grown-ups in the audience.

Still, in a summer movie season that has given us Toy Story 3, it’s hard to accept the premise that animated movies (or kids’ movies in general) should be judged on a different scale.

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Song of the Day #717: ‘Highway Patrolman’ – Bruce Springsteen

While I’ve always been aware of Bruce Springsteen and his importance to popular music, I didn’t have a strong connection to any of his albums that I’d heard. That changed, however, when I picked up Nebraska, Springsteen’s 1982 acoustic release.

Nebraska was originally recorded at Springsteen’s home as a demo on 4-track cassette and later embellished with the full E-Street Band in the studio. But Bruce decided that the demo versions brought the haunting songs to life more effectively than his work with the band, so they were mastered and released as the full album.

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Song of the Day #716: ‘I’m Waking Up to Us’ – Belle & Sebastian

I’ve read that the new Barenaked Ladies album (the first without Steven Page) contains several songs with references to Page’s departure… usually bitter references trashing him for letting down the band. That makes them the latest in a long line of band members who have used their music to take shots at each other.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney famously ripped each other in their first solo albums after The Beatles broke up (John’s ‘How Do You Sleep?’ was particularly brutal, including the lines “those freaks was right when they said you was dead… the sound you make is muzak to my ears, you must have learned something in all those years”).

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Song of the Day #715: ‘Iowa (Traveling III)’ – Dar Williams

One of the things I like about Dar Williams is that she’s a very good lyricist whose lyrics are almost always easily dissected. That’s in contrast to, say, Elvis Costello, who is also a fine lyricist but often writes whole songs that leave me baffled.

Now sure, I think there is something to be said for poetic imagery that can be interpreted a dozen different ways by a dozen different people, but sometimes I just want a song that speaks to me in words I understand about themes I can appreciate.

On that front, Williams delivers in spades.

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