Music – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Farewell Country Joe McDonald

Gone, not forgotten. Perhaps rekindled.

Country Joe McDonald, née Joseph Allen McDonald, passed away last week at the age of 84, taking another page out of the songbook of my early life with him. The good thing about music is that the songs and the impressions they make never die.

My father used to hate that I played his music over and over. Which of course led me to play his music over and over even more during those years of America’s war in Vietnam.

And as we all know, or one day find out, what was will always be again.

In the wake of Country Joe’s passing another generation is discovering songs of his especially The Fish Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I’m Fixing- To-Die-Rag, which McDonald wrote in 20 minutes or so for an anti-Vietnam War play. About the song, he’s quoted as saying he “was inspired to write a song about how soldiers have no choice in the matter, but to follow orders, but with the irreverence of rock n’ roll. It was essentially punk rock before punk existed.”

It’s a damn shame we actually have to go through terrible times again to re-discover the music that helped us through them once before. But here we are.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

U2 Joins Parade of Musicians Meeting the Moment

American Obituary, a tribute to Renee Good

Slowly the jukebox is beginning to fill up. U2 has joined the list of musicians releasing songs of protest agains the Trump regime’s horrors with a new song, American Obituary, now available on a six-cut EP titled Days of Ash.

American Obituary features lyrics paying tribute to Renee Good, who was horribly murdered in Minneapolis. According to U2 frontman Bono the album, released on Ash Wednesday, contains “reactions to present day anxieties.”

Let’s hope this catalog of protest songs keeps growing, because what we’re protesting about sure shows no sign of slowing down.

Bruce Springsteen Meets The Moment With New Song: Streets Of Minneapolis

We need more of this from musicians

Meeting the moment in music is what it’s all about. Or should be. Bruce Springsteen has done so with a new song, Streets of Minneapolis. CleanShot 2026-01-28 at 11.13.36@2x.

There’s no metaphors. There’s no guessing. He cuts right to the point and the heart. The way musicians always do when they have a mind to. We need more of this and I’d love to hear this song live at the upcoming Grammy Awards.

Give it a listen and spread it around.

The Subtle Difference Between Making Noise and Making Music

Strike up the band

Young kids are great at making noise. If you pay attention, you discover that even while doing so with toy musical instruments (or anything else they can lay their hands on) they might actually have a predisposition to eventually making music. Or at least that they have a sense of rhythm.

Or maybe not.

Living in the Past with Apple Music Replay

Musical time warps

I listen to music but I’m not a voracious listener like some are. Fact is, I spend most of my listening time with podcasts and audio books. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see what music I did spend my time listening to. Apple Music, like other music services, offers a feature to summarize what tunes you’ve tuned into over the year called Apple Music Replay.

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Given all that’s going on in the U.S currently I shouldn’t find it surprising that I spent most of my time reliving parts of my youth that were just as tumultuous as our present, revisiting a lot of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and The Grateful Dead as well as the musical Girl From the North Country that features the music of Bob Dylan. (I spent considerably more time with that selection last year.)

It’s also interesting to me that when I do listen to music I do so through a couple of very eclectic playlists that range over quite a few genres. I never see that reflected in these generated mixes, only artists or albums I’ve selected specifically, which tells me these lists are mostly made up from selections you’re searching for. Perhaps that explains why when I ask Siri to cue up a playlist it fails as much as it succeeds. But then again, most of those playlists contain mostly music from my past, more than contemporary selections.

Seems to me, we could all do with a little more music these days that is speaking directly to these days.

Little Feat Wraps It Up

Feats never let me down

News this week that one of my favorite bands of all time, Little Feat, is retiring after a final tour brought back quite a few memories. The Last Farewell Tour will kick off next spring and run through two years, promoting the band and their latest album, Strike Up The Band.

Little Feat - Feats Don't Fail Me Now.

As for those memories, in what seems like a lifetime ago when I was in college I had an assistantship in the theatre department’s scene shop. When touring acts came to campus we’d sometimes be assigned to help with load in and load out, and occasionally help run the show.

Little Feat was promoting what would become one of my favorite of their albums, Feats Don’t Fail Me Now, while opening for Joe Cocker, another of my favorites. I got the assignment to run follow spot for the gig. Up until that point I wasn’t familiar with Little Feat’s music, but that concert turned me on and I’ve been a fan ever since. They rocked the house as the warm up act and the crowd wasn’t ready for their set to end.

They certainly weren’t ready for what came next.

During the changeover a roadie came out and set two cases of Budweiser beer on the stage by the central microphone. Cocker’s band came on, tuned up a bit, the lights went down, the band kicked off the intro, at the conclusion of which Cocker was supposed to enter, which was my first cue of the set. The band was still using the intro from Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen days and all of the stage mechanics happened as planned, the crowd was pumped, but there was no Joe Cocker.

After a few moments delay we got the message to reset and we did it all again. This time Joe Cocker appeared on cue with a fifth of whiskey in his hands. He stumbled to the mic, and promptly threw up all over the stage. Yep, I had my follow spot lighting up the entire thing.

That was the end of the concert. Cocker was escorted offstage as the band played the Mad Dogs and Englishmen intro once again, then said good night and left the stage. The crowd was understandably upset with the headliner, but in the days that followed the talk was all about Little Feat’s music.

That was a moment to remember and a memory to laugh at certainly. But as well as I remember that I’ll never forget my introduction to Little Feat and their music. The band’s roster has changed throughout the years (most of the current members are in their 70’s) and the band’s songbook has journeyed its way through different American music genres. Their final album, Strike Up The Band, lands with a return to their original sound, albeit matured and nurtured from steps along the journey. It brings back memories.

There’s a brief, but good write up about the band’s retirement decision and final tour in Rolling Stone here.

Zach Bryan’s Bad News Gets Under MAGA’s Thin Skin

Country singer Zach Bryan is teasing the MAGAts as he teases his new song, Bad News.

The teaser of the song swipes at ICE and ends with a powerful lyric that I imagine is the full song’s hook:

Got some bad news

The fading of the red, white, and blue

If he included that in the teaser, his target is no secret. You can check out the teaser of the song below.

Bryan is no slouch of a Country singer, filling stadiums, selling lots of his music to a large following. Here’s hoping his instincts reach some in that large audience with this song of protest, beyond the MAGAt reactionary force that’s already all over this effort.

Nothing Lasts Forever

Another chapter of Chicago theatre history comes to a close

You know how you know that nothing lasts forever? When you go online to search for images of a place you worked, shed more than a few beads of sweat, blood, and tears in, and you can’t find images of it.

That’s the case here. I’m referring to Theatre Building, at 1225 W Belmont, Chicago. Yes, there is no “the” in front of it. Like Apple insists that there is no “the” before iPhone. In the case of the performance space that was intentional. Pretentious maybe, but purposeful nonetheless.

Theatre Building was founded as such in 1977 by three theatre companies: Travel Light Theatre, Pary Productions and the Dinglefest Theatre Company. The latter of those became Performance Community, and then the New Tuners Theatre, and after Travel Light and Pary Productions hit their respective closings, ended up managing the three theatre complex.

At one point or another just about every Chicago theatre company, and some from outside the city, rented performance space there. It was one of the centers of gravity in the Chicago theatre landscape. I can’t tell you the number of amazing performances by Chicago actors that I’ve seen on those stages. Shows hit. Shows flopped. Shows happened. And that was the point and purpose of Theatre Building.

Theatre Building was sold to Stage 773 in 2010 and still continued providing a home for Chicago theatres, until it changed it’s focus and became WHIM, which was supposed to be a sort of interactive attraction before it folded.

Here we are in 2025 and The Chicago City Council has granted approval for the property to be converted to a five-story apartment complex. As I said. nothing lasts forever.

My theatre company, The Absolute Theatre Company rented space there for a number of years, and I later served on the staff of New Tuners Theatre and helped manage the facility. I helped renovate the three theatre spaces in the late 90’s. So there are quite a few personal memories attached to those stages. They seems like another lifetime ago.

Change happens. The sad thing about this one is that there are three less performance spaces in Chicago, but that’s been the case since Stage 773 ran into financial difficulties and had to shut down after becoming WHIM.

I may not have been able to find a picture this morning of Theatre Building, but I do have this brick from the building that was given to me after my last show, before I headed out to Virginia for that part of my theatre career.

Guess I’ll hang on to that piece of Chicago theatre history.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

A Trip Worth Taking: Billy Joel Documentary ‘And So It Goes’

Terrific trip down my lanes of memories.

Talk about bringing back the memories and the feels. The excellent Billy Joel documentary, And So It Goes, is a must watch if you’re a fan. Or even if you’re not. I am a fan and have been since I worked a load-in, load-out shift for a Billy Joel concert back in my college days and partied with his road crew.

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The excellent two-part documentary chronicles the ups, downs, and of course there’s plenty of Joel’s music, because it’s always about the music and where it took Joel and those of us who grew up with him. It’s more than a trip down memory lane, the four hours is a well spent vacation back in time. I highly recommend this.

It’s interesting, and I dare say rewarding, that two of the music artists I grew up with, Joel and Bruce Springsteen, have had excellent recent documentaries about their careers. As they and I both hit later decades of life it’s a good way to look back and dredge up memories often buried in the hurly burly of the current day to day. I consider these documentaries on HBO (or whatever it calls itself this week) gifts well received.

For those interested further, there’s a playlist of the music from And So It Goes available on all the usual music streaming services. If your library, like mine, is filled with the entire catalog of Joel’s music, it’s worth adding just to track and hear how some of his songs have matured, yet not lost any of relevance, and even gained both relevance and resonance with time.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sheryl Crow’s New Protest Song ‘The New Normal’

We need more protest songs.

I wish we heard more like this from our musical artists. Sheryl Crow doesn’t shy away when it comes to letting her political feelings out. In her latest song ‘The New Normal’ she certainly lets her voice be heard.

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“Is it science fiction or prediction wrapped in George Orwell?” If the news is fake and fear is hate and nothing’s immoral to the leader of the free world, then welcome to the new normal,” goes the refrain.

I certainly don’t want to think of any of this as normal, new or otherwise. But I like the song and the motivation behind it.

You can listen to ‘The New Normal’ at this link.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.