Outside Counsel

Tuesday, May 26, 2026

Sonny Rollins, famously associated with the Williamsburg Bridge, has crossed the Rainbow Bridge. I find that I've posted about him a fair bit.

// posted by Bill @ 3:19 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

I credit Ron Rosenbaum with getting back on the Dylan train. He's produced a book on Bob, and I'm looking forward to it

// posted by Bill @ 3:48 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, May 12, 2026

Sometimes I like to think about super-powers. Someone who has magnetic powers is popular: Magneto, Cosmic Boy, Polaris. Mostly this seems to involve waving one's hands around to manipulate stuff, but it seems to me that this isn't really how this power would work. It seems more likely to me that these people would be covered in iron filings and assorted other magnetic junk. Kitchen appliances would constantly be shifted out of position when they walk by, computer drives would be ruined....

// posted by Bill @ 11:11 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, May 05, 2026

Just in case, here's Theresa Nelson Heyden's account of her expulsion from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

// posted by Bill @ 11:12 AM 0 comments

Monday, March 16, 2026

People are sometimes surprised that I have a turntable, although they probably shouldn’t be- I’m a perfect fit for that demographic. I think it’s a bit more peculiar that I still have a tape deck. It’s even a medium fancy one. I cannot remember the last time I used it, but today I popped an old mixtape in it.

Like digging in at a great record store the pleasures associated with making a great mixtape have largely been lost to us. Some of the fun was cerebral: what feelings, or range of feelings do I want the listener to experience? Some of it was technical: segues that are either seamless or shocking; no miscues. Some of it was just showing off the depths of your record collection. (I don’t think we called them ‘vinyl’ much, and unless it’s a single or a 78 a collection of recorded music is an album to me.) A great mixtape is an act of curation. I did a little bit of live DJ’ing in my misspent youth, and there are things that both have in common, but I think there are enough differences to matter.

For one thing, live DJ’ing is much more performative. Making a mixtape for a party is, arguably, more aspirational. You hope the party goes the way you’ve programmed and if it doesn’t you can’t fix it on the fly.

Damn, we had great taste. I’m pretty sure this was made by my brother Greg - know I didn’t own some of the cuts and the lettering looks like it might be his. We bought Maxell Chrome C90s by the six pack and almost exclusively. Occasionally we’d try a different brand- TDK was reliable, and sometimes we’d try the more expensive metal tapes, but this Maxell ChromeI’m listening to sounds great right now

// posted by Bill @ 12:46 PM 0 comments

Friday, March 13, 2026

To a show by a band called Top Hat last night, more or less bluegrass adjacent. They were fun, and it occurred to me that there is a line that runs from vaudeville through the Smothers Brothers and A Prairie Home Companion to Mumford & Sons and a thousand Brooklyn bluegrass bands

// posted by Bill @ 1:50 PM 0 comments

Sunday, March 01, 2026

Good review of a complicated record: <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/cahoots-19711111"> Jon Landau on The Band's Cahoots</a>. It seems to me that Greil Marcus's conception of "the old, weird America" has always been better exemplified by The Band than by Dylan, although, to be sure ol' Bob has traveled there. The problem with The Band is an auteur problem: are we willing to concede to Robbie Robertson, a Canadian, born and raised on the Six Nations Reservation, sole credit for a vision of the United States which seems like some sort of Jungian collective unconscious version of the American identity? It seems improbable, and there is testimony-- chiefly that of Levon Helm-- to the contrary. And yet, there's the evidence, right there on the label. And is it so improbable, after all? Doesn't outsider-- or maybe better, pereferal status, confer insight that someone closer might miss? Aren't some of the most perceptive movies about America by immigrants?is there a better "old, Weird America" movie than Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot? Isn't Saul Bellow's Augie March as American as Columbus himself?

// posted by Bill @ 9:59 PM 0 comments