51 years ago, I walked onto my deserted campus and experienced a musical hallucination. That terrible time when American soldiers killed American citizens.

Don’t try this at home.

Why do I so respect Glenn Gould? Because his playing is willful, extreme, eccentric. Because it’s utterly engaged.

David Crosby’s best songs with The Byrds employed a psychedelic sensibility – floating, meandering, precious, delicate, shimmering, as unfettered and fragile as a soap bubble wafting in a marijuana cloud above a Tribal Gathering. ‘Everybody’s Been Burned’ is one of his finest. It has the weight of melody and lyric content and meaning and emotion and passion, and yet it still floats.

Erik Satie hung out with Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc, Milhaud, Stravinsky, Cocteau, Duchamp, Picasso, Braque, Man Ray, Breton, Diaghilev and Rene Clair, but no one entered his apartment for the last 27 years of his life. After his death, 84 identical handkerchiefs were found in his wardrobe.

“The Perfect Song” and some indulgent navel-gazing. Do I choose the music, or has the music formed me? My personal existentiality as reflected a 2-minute paragon of restraint.

What a singer. What a musician. What a cool guy.

Dion, from doo Wop to Dylanizer.
More swagger than Jagger.