Heritage Auctions has been a key driver of original art prices, but ya gotta love their high-resolution scans. So click to enlarge!
Compare the page above, inked by Vince Colletta, with the page below, inked by my pal Joe Sinnott. The only thing they had in common was that neither one of them ever missed a deadline.
When I was a little kid, up to the time when the Beatles arrived in America, and beyond, the first three Peter, Paul & Mary albums were played a lot at home. They were my first popular musical reference point.
Listening to those old mono LP’s this week for the first time in years, I’m struck by how depressing they all are! Even “Puff the Magic Dragon” is sad. I guess “If I Had a Hammer” is supposed to be the happy song?
Many of the songs are weighed down by allusions to Biblical times. This one, from the second album, is filled with despair. It’s based on a tune from sometime in the 1800’s.
This reminds me of John Lennon making fun of protest songs in the 1965 Beatles fan club Christmas record, with Ringo tossing in a River Jordan dig for good measure. Later on, John was of course big on protest songs himself.
This must be the first time I have ever significantly revised my view of some of the music that I grew up with. “Rock and Roll Music” is the only bouncy and fun Peter Paul & Mary record that comes to mind. But I think its message rings hollow, serving not to knock those other artists, but to point out just how good they were.
It’s Tolkien Reading Day. Brian Sibley, a friend of the blog, will do a live reading of “The Black Gate Opens” between 11-11:30 AM ET.
https://youtu.be/ylKhee_3z-M
Brian is rightly proud of his work on the 1981 unabridged BBC dramatization of The Lord of the Rings. I have the CD box set. It was the first time that the late Ian Holm played a Tolkien character.
A place that Denro was able to visit, in its all-too-brief glory days, was George Martin’s AIR Studios in Montserrat. Unlike the Universal Music Group warehouse fire, AIR was destroyed by a natural disaster.
I have a thing for turntables to play records. Others have a thing for guns to shoot bullets. Both interests have been increasing in popularity in recent years. I’ll stick with turntables and records.
I’ve finally gotten around to reading this article from five months ago. Why did it take me so long?
“As we age, it’s harder to have a get-up-and-go attitude toward things,” says Ann Graybiel, an Institute Professor at MIT and member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.
