Monthly Archives: December 2010

Million Dollar Mistake

By Roger Catlin | Published: December 29, 2010

It was probably a drive toward democratization that game shows, aside from the ever more rare stalwarts such as “Jeopardy” started shying away from actual book knowledge and school smarts. Quiz shows started to rely more often on pop culture trivia, polling and newspaper fun facts to move from the seeming elitism of actual knowledge. [...]

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Playlist 12-24-10

By Roger Catlin | Published: December 29, 2010

Normally a show before Christmas brings all holiday tunes, particularly one scheduled on Christmas Eve. But I wanted to note the death of Captain Beefheart, and the Christmastime anniversaries of deaths by Joe Strummer and James Brown before diving wholly into the caroling, including cuts from Bob Dylan and Sufjan Stevens to Mindy Smith and [...]

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Lotta ‘Little Drummer Boy’

By Roger Catlin | Published: December 29, 2010

The weird little duet by David Bowie and Bing Crosby, recorded for a Christmas special in 1977 and released as a single in 1982, has taken on a life of its own this holiday season. It was a music teacher at Concord Academy in Massachusetts, Katherine K. Davis, who wrote the tune, first known as [...]

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Remembering Captain Beefheart

By Roger Catlin | Published: December 29, 2010

Captain Beefheart’s music came to me through the curatorial services of Frank Zappa The purveyor of the unusual in his own work in the Mothers of Invention, his Bizarre label tried to live up to its name by signing the strange, the otherworldly and and the outsider. Wild Man Fischer was one, of course. Like [...]

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Playlist 12-17-10

By Roger Catlin | Published: December 22, 2010

This is getting to be a bad habit: Posting this set list later and later. Let’s blame the holidays, shall we? Started off Friday’s show with some Bill Withers and Mose Allison before moving into some Tricky, Underworld and James Brown to accompany some new Royksopp. After a fair sampling of the new Steve Wynn, [...]

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Attack of the Santas

By Roger Catlin | Published: December 22, 2010

It wasn’t the optimum day to kick around and trawl the pubs – the crowds in town for the holiday trappings was approaching overkill. But I realized I had a bigger problem when I tooled into New York and started seeing marauding gangs of young people dressed in Santa costumes, bent on nothing more than [...]

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Christmas with the Waldos

By Roger Catlin | Published: December 22, 2010

One more story about my recent weekend visit to New York City: Stopping in to see the Christmas tour of Jesse Malin with Marah and others. I had vaguely marked down their visit in Northhampton to catch this year. Jack never misses it down in Philly and I was determined to take it in somewhere [...]

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Paulie’s Recent Splash

By Roger Catlin | Published: December 22, 2010

It’s been a fruitful season for Paul McCartney, who at 68 has been playing small newsmaking gigs on both sides of the ocean – at the Apollo and the 100 Club, been anointed one more time by the President in a Kennedy Center ceremony airing later this month, and making key TV appearances on Jimmy [...]

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Buying Back the Past

By Roger Catlin | Published: December 22, 2010

The bulge in the population represented by post-World War II baby boomers doesn’t just affect Social Security futures. It also affects rock ‘n’ roll. This was the rock generation, after all, grew up and ate and breathed the stuff. And when we grew up we were going to just keep on rockin, right? Well, not [...]

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Carrie Fisher Does ‘Wishful Drinking’

By Roger Catlin | Published: December 11, 2010

Carrie Fisher, who presents her “Wishful Drinking” special on HBO Sunday, says that indeed her mother, Debbie Reynolds has seen it. And? “Well, I’m out of the will” she deadpanned. “But she doesn’t have any money anyway.” Actually, she said, “my mom is like any mother. She’s actually glad that I’m doing this kind of [...]

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