Tag: Issue 02-25-2013
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Cody Chesnutt, Old Soul
Huddled in the basement with a 4-track cassette recorder, an eccentric youngish soul singer laid a critically acclaimed double cd, The Headphone Master Piece. Through the album sold poorly it was a critical success. Cited for its low-fi grittiness and biting social commentary, “Headphone Masterpiece” caused industry insiders to take notice. Cody Chesnutt’s genius status…
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Soliloquy to America
“There are two ways of spreading the light, / To be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”—Edith Wharton I’d like to shed some “light” on a few things I’ve had on my mind for quite a long time. I am first and foremost a poet. A poet speaks through the mouth of truth…
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Gun Control At Home & Abroad
There has been a lot of attention given to gun violence since the day Adam Lanza armed himself with hundreds of bullets and took the lives of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. This tragic story has gotten the attention of corporate media, the nation, and from a President who hails from…
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Detox Blues, Part Two
(I was dope-sick, trying to cop from a doctor; my wife was in detox.) I really wanted to smoke a cigarette to calm down, but I didn’t want to walk in there stinking of tobacco. So, I just took some deep breaths and listened to the phlegm in my chest rattle. It sounded great. When…
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Boston, Barrence, & Blues
Award winning poet and writer Maya Angelou, fresh off a collaboration with Common on his latest album, in response to queries regarding the two artists’ different beliefs, as in: ‘what would she do about it?’ replied “Nothing,” and ruminated on philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli’s principle that “‘the surest way to control people was to divide them.’”…
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Teddy Pendergrass, Soul Man
Theodore Dereese “Teddy” Pendergrass was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a working class father and mother. After his father left the family, he was raised by his mother, Ida Pendergrass, a religious sharecropper’s daughter from South Carolina, the rhythm-and-blues state. Theodore’s mother discovered his voice when he began singing in church at only 2 ½…
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Sex & Soul Music
It was simply a brief introduction to the career of Rod Temperton, the British-born songwriter, who first came to prominence with the group Heatwave. Specifically, I was reminiscing about Heatwave’s “Always and Forever,” a classic Soul ode to longstanding love and romance. Unfortunately, my class of 60-plus millennials were not quite as excited by the…
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Bob Marley, Soul Rebel
“Live if you want to live / That’s what we got to give,” were the first lines sung by Bob Marley at the Amandla Festival held at the Harvard Coliseum some 34 years ago in 1979. Marley’s plea for life eternally resonates in the minds and hearts of all his listeners, which is exactly why…
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The Courage & Vision of Medgar Evers
“One hundred fifty years after the Emancipation Proclamation and 50 years after the March on Washington, we celebrate the spirit of our ancestors, which has allowed us to move from a nation of unborn hopes and a history of disenfranchised votes to today’s expression of a more perfect union . . . Where our paths…
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Is Springfield America's Second Gayest City?
Springfield, Massachuestts was chosen as the Advocate’s second most LGBT friendly city in America this January, beating out other big names like St. Louis and Seattle. The Advocate publishes a list of America’s Gayest Cities every year, and chose Tacoma, Wash. as this year’s winner. Springfield was the only New England city chosen besides Providence,…