DOWN ON ME Nobody heard it until after “Cheap Thrills,” but despite distant, lame instrumentation and production, Janis’s magic shines through. At first, we in the hinterlands, i.e. not San Francisco, were thrown off by Joplin’s vocals, the same way we were years later with Rod Stewart’s, but we soon became enamored of her voice. […]

1. Only blockbusters count and make serious dough. Either you’re a superstar or you’re starving. Yes, the Internet allows old folks and some young ‘uns to troll on on a subsistence budget doing house concerts and maybe playing theatres, which have now all been relabeled “clubs,” but the dream of paying your dues and breaking […]

1. You’re gonna keep your mobile handset a hell of a lot longer. With T-Mobile shifting the tide to non-subsidized handsets, many people are going to balk at paying $649 for a new iPhone, they believe it’s only $200, the same way some people believe the handset they got for free with a two year […]

I’m numb, both literally and figuratively, and not comfortably. Mama said there’d be days like this, when the best laid plans go to waste. Yes, plans. I have a birthday routine. Langer’s, a movie and a hot fudge sundae. It hearkens back to ’77, when I went with my girlfriend to the aforementioned home of […]