Canned Dragons

Isaac Greene points out what Dolly Parton and Mr. Rogers had in common.

Though her life was certainly more glamorous than Mr. Rogers’s, Dolly Parton demonstrated the same ability to pay attention to those around here. There are so many stories of her kindness to studio crews, cameramen, and particularly musicians. She always had time to speak with everyone and see them where they were. Like Mr. Rogers, she always remembered her helpers. When Porter Wagner fell on hard times later in life, Dolly purchased the rights to his back catalogue and gave them to him as a gift. He had taken advantage of her in a vulnerable moment in her early career, but she chose to remember that he had gotten her started in show business and taught her to succeed.

Read more...

Are you ready for… Death Cab For Cutie’s 5th best album? Rather than the typical response that their new record — I Built You A Tower — was their best or best since (insert highly praised past release), when DCFC’s Ben Gibbard was asked to rank their albums, he put their latest in 5th place. Of course, this surprised, and I’m sure greatly displeased, their publicist.

Read more...

Transformers: The Movie is showing in theaters in 4K starting in September to celebrate its 40th anniversary. I’m going to be like a kid when this comes out. I was so excited when the movie first dropped and fulfilled expectations with drama, action, and a great cast of voice actors.

Read more...

The latest casualty of the streaming wars is The Bird and the Bee’s 2015 album Recreational Love, which unceremoniously disappeared from Qobuz sometime recently. The album still shows up, but lists all the tracks as “unavailable.” Usually this is a sign that the service has loaded a newer version of the album to select. Not so in this case.

Music by The Bird and the Bee can sometimes be hard to find. The band followed up their first volume of Interpreting the Masters, an album of Hall & Oates covers, with a volume of Van Halen covers. The first is readily available, the second, almost impossible to hear on any format other than used vinyl. All the album’s listed on the merch site that the band links to are sold out. When there are so many music services out there, it seems careless not to make your albums available somewhere digitally.

Read more...

At this point, I tend to average 1-2 podcasts a week. I’m in hybrid work mode, which means I drive to an office on a local college campus two days out of the week and work remotely from my home office the other three days. That gives me time for about 90 minutes of podcasts on my commute. My number one selection currently is Not Dead Yet (Apple Podcasts) hosted by Ben Sasse and Chris Stirewalt. As Ben Sasse undergoes treatment for his pancreatic cancer (and faces his own mortality), he’s been interested in discussing what comprises the good life.

Read more...

It seems more people and organizations that were principally opposed to the X (ex-Twitter) network a few short years ago are now returning. Sometimes, they are doing so with apologies, as if they know it’s a bad look. The latest is the Apple-centric publication Macstories. The move was accompanied by the requisite explanation that they do not support the politics of Elon Musk or the direction he has taken the platform.

Read more...