Phil Ochs and the 21st Century

Jude: Doesn't really matter, you know, what kind of nasty names people invent for the music.

It would have been a storybook ending: a Pacers title on the anniversary of the day the Pacers drafted Reggie Miller.

There have been occasions when the passing of someone has left me unable to find the right words to express the gravity of the situation.

I wrote this late last night after watching a Undefeated: The Roger Brown Story and feeling inspired by a piece written by my friend, Nick, who was a classmate of mine in high school.

Today marks the 35th anniversary of the passing of Jim Henson.

My first year of Beatles fandom was filled with milestones.

I wouldn't say that I was raised on romance. Let's not get stuck in the past. My mother and I didn’t often see eye to eye on culture and art. If she hated a movie, that made it more likely I’d love it and vice versa. She enjoyed The Scarlet Letter,…

My soft spot for Westerns developed at an early age. While on my first West Coast stint, I lived in Grants Pass, Oregon. A place most notable nationally for a recent ruling about homelessness set to make things more difficult for the people living on…

The Year Of Magical Thinking. Joan Didion’s similarly named book inspired the title of this newsletter. I liked my variation on the Yeats line because it sounds vaguely like a pun, which is the dumb person’s idea of a bon mot, and that’s why I love…

When someone of note dies, there’s a tendency for people to be effusive in their praise. I think a large part of that is driven by a desire not to speak ill of the dead, to serve as a counter-narrative to would-be contrarians, and to connect with…

What came first, the basketball or the misery? Did I watch basketball because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I watched basketball? Do all those seasons coming up short turn you into a melancholy person? On a certain level, I think being…

, a great new blog that covers a wide range of music and features writing from contributors from a variety of backgrounds. Look for more pieces from me on there in the future! Growing up, I didn’t give much thought to my ethnic identity. I’m sure a…

I had wanted to write about R.E.M. soon; I figured I should since I’d already written about The Replacements and Hüsker Dü, two members of my Holy Trinity of 80s alternative rock. This week was perfect for it after a few recent events. I saw a clip…

The class I took in college that had the most influence on me was easily Rock Music in the 70s and 80s. Despite the title, the course covered music beyond that range. The stuff from the 60s that served as building blocks for what was to come in the…

The worst birthday I ever had was the first one without my mother. The second worst was the one where The Who played the Super Bowl halftime show. They sounded terrible, a fact I blamed on the production team. I’d seen them play live twice on a tour…

A Catholic Education A Catholic Education I was raised Catholic, which is why I am no longer Catholic. That’s what I usually tell people. It’s not an original thought; I once heard a joke that went something like that on Premium Blend or some other…

Neil Young understands the burden of being a survivor—the guilt of what ifs, counterfactuals that point to a different outcome. A series of tragedies sparked a run of work that plumbs the depths of human misery with occasional flickers of hope and…

Phil Ochs in Los Angeles For some Angelenos, it’s a bragging point to say you have lived in LA and New York City. It suggests wordiness and a certain amount of toughness, as making it in both places requires resilience, luck, and money. Phil Ochs was…

Indianapolis is never far from my mind, especially in recent weeks with the hosting of the NBA All-Star Game. The first time the Circle City has hosted it since 1985. When it was announced in 2016 that it would host the game in 2021, I wondered if…