Posts by Benjamin
What’s Left Behind To Shoulder Grows Weightless
Sometimes, tragedy brings good things in its wake. On Saturday afternoon, drummer Ryan’s Vaughn’s girlfriend Kasey’s family vehicle was struck by a drunk driver on South Carolina Interstate 26. Kasey’s father was killed. Her little sister, Allie, was thrown from the vehicle. Her mother, niece and friend sustained minor injuries. The Williams were on their…
Read MoreConey Island Or Bust
As the crow flies, Coney Island is a mere fourteen miles from Midtown Manhattan. Unfortunately, I am neither a crow, nor do I fly. Last Monday morning, NY1’s Pat Kiernan forecasted Sunday as a “perfect beach day.” Which is when I hatched my plan to run to Coney Island, meet Abbi there, and spend the…
Read MoreIt Might Get Loud
Director Davis Guggenheim’s new documentary love letter to the electric guitar, “It Might Get Loud,” is loaded with unbelievable moments. First, he manages to shoot Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page’s visit to Headley Grange, the East Hampshire, England, home studio where the band recorded “Led Zeppelin IV.” Page is regal in his puffy, white shirt…
Read MoreHome Is Where Your Friends Are
God bless The Nadas. First they ask me to contribute a song to their “Crystalline” project, a compilation of Authentic Records’ artists covering The Nadas in honor of the band’s fifteenth anniversary. So I recorded a bang-up version of “Feel Like Home” with Chris, Jamie and Tony a few weeks ago which Jon Locker (sustaining…
Read MoreThe 2009 Brickyard 400 (Or, Speedway Nights: The Ballad Of Jimmie Johnson)
First rule of Nascar is you don’t talk about Nascar. It’s not that facts, statistics, cultural judgments, stereotypes or general biographical data aren’t valuable. They are. Of course (like you), I knew nothing of Nascar until last year’s Brickyard 400. This (now seasonal) confab was born of a conversation at my bachelor party and the…
Read MoreThe Space Between Apollo And The Great Beyond
There’s been a lot of talk about space in the news lately. Monday marked the fortieth anniversary of NASA’s Apollo 11 lunar landing. On Sunday, an amateur Australian astronomer discovered a fresh hole in Jupiter’s atmosphere the size of the Pacific Ocean. And this afternoon, residents from the Ganges River in India to remote islands…
Read MoreRock ‘N Roll Reconsidered
For years now, I’ve tossed around “rock ‘n roll” as an adjective. Sure, it’s a popular musical genre that evolved in the United States after World War II that combines African American rhythms and blues culture, country and gospel. And yeah, its instrumentation is typically guitars, bass and drums (typically a boogie woogie blues rhythm…
Read MoreWalter Cronkite (1916–2009)
In the fall if 1989, I sat deep within the blue light of Conestoga High School’s dusty, off-white library single-finger typing my Northwestern University application into one of the school’s ten, well-worn IBM PCs. I don’t remember much about the assignment, or my thesis, or even what made me think I should be a journalism…
Read MorePanic At Funland
There is no panic for a seventeen-year-old like the panic incurred by hoisting and spinning a dozen toddlers eight feet in the air, then leaving them there for so long that they began to cry for their parents and attempt to leap from their seats. That seventeen-year-old was me twenty years ago this month. I…
Read MoreWoodgrain
Master Luthier Carlo Greco’s dusty workshop sits two stories and two thousand miles above 48th Street through an unmarked, glass door, one flight up a rickety staircase from an accordion maker. Carlo was the General Foreman of Guild Guitars from 1959-1977. A classical guitar builder from Italy by way of Argentina, he traveled to South…
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