Here are a couple of ladies who span generations and genres. They can rock, swing, and croon like nobody’s business, and are renown for their independence. Wanda Jackson is a founding mother of Rockabilly and still partying at 88; She started recording in 1954, and just recently retired. Although she forged the magical fusion elixir that we call Rockabilly, she has also scored hits in the Gospel and Country genres. 

Sarah Jarosz, 50+ years younger, studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, but remains pure Texas, like Nanci Griffith or Lyle Lovett - indie Americana artists who fuse cou...

To counteract whatever "derangement syndrome" you might be experiencing at the moment, Bill Mesnik of the Splendid Bohemians offers an antidote to your psychic gray skies. 

Today we're cracking open the big magnums of joy juice, and going back to the very beginning of the Sunny Side of My Street archives with 4 delightful infusions from the land of smiles:

100 Years From Today, by Jack Teagarden

The Pink Panther Theme, by Henry Mancini

Accentuate the Positive, by Johnny Mercer

and

The Hut Sut Song, by Horton the Elephant a...

DINO, AND SAMMY, AND FRANK - O MY!

What tomfoolery! It’s 4 o’clock in the morning, and these bad boys are just getting started. This recording is a rare glimpse into the real, live, Rat Pack experience - and, the slightly distorted, overloaded sound is just part of the cinema verite. “YOU ARE THERE,” as Walter Cronkite once intoned. 

The year is 1962. Dean Martin has circled back to the 500 club in Atlantic City, where his career with Jerry Lewis first exploded, and his rat pack brothers in arms are there to support. For anybody devoted t...

Today we present two piano instrumentals that explore the mysteries of Mist.  Strictly speaking, a “mist” can be defined by some water vapor that obscures your vision, but how many more evocative instances can you think of where a mist appears in a story or film, usually preceding an arrival of some spiritual manifestation? There was a video game called “Myst” (spelled with a Y) which featured a series of puzzles saturated with a heady whiff of the arcane. Your sight is always obscured; your emotional restlessness is never assuaged.  

Erroll Garner and Bix Beiderbecke were two jazz titan...

Given that we lost Brian Wilson recently, and there’s been a lot of talk about the elimination of the affordable subcompact, I thought we could reflect a bit upon America’s obsession with the automobile. The BIG auto; the POWERFUL auto.  Especially here in Los Angeles - you gotta have wheels - and you’ll be judged by what you drive. Once, while stopped at an intersection in my little Saturn, I was heckled mercilessly by some tweens on skateboards.

On the other side of the argument sits the Goddess Shania Twain - that Canadian Everywoman who rai...

SPIRIT ANIMAL

JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL by Neil Diamond (Columbia, 1973)

There were alot of self-help manuals popularized in the 70’s; I remember gifting my mother the book “Your Eronneous Zones” (but that’s another story)…. My acting teacher in college based her syllabus on Eric Berne’s “I’m Ok, You’re Ok”. But one of the biggest New Age parables making the rounds was Ex-Aviator Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the story of an anthropomorphized Christ-like Seagull, who has to fly off from the pack to find his true self.

It was a zeitgeist sensation...

There have been a lot of good to great films released this year - serious films, films with urgent political underpinnings, films that mix satire, pathos, and artistic ambition with such style that it salves my damaged psyche with a hope that there will be a light at the end of this dark tunnel in which we currently find ourselves. While there is a mordant undertone to many of these transmissions, there is also an implicit message from these artists that life will go on, and there is always love, joy, and gratitude to celebrate at the end of...

“You gotta have faith,” George Michael sang a long time ago. Given the unfortunate fate that befell that conflicted artist, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect upon how hard it is to find inner peace, and make a commitment to whatever faith you still possess during this Christmas season. Life is very complicated right now and holding on to love, practicing gratitude, and radiating good intentions will help to get us through these dark days. 

We here at The Hotel Bohemia want to gift you a holiday sampler chock full of savory contradictions and sweet mysteri...

Today, we feature a Christmas cracker that offers some new perspectives on one of our most treasured holiday traditions - The Xmas Song: First, The Turtles, singing “Christmas is My Time of Year,” then, the esteemed actor, Harvey Keitel, telling an off the wall Christmas story, from the film Smoke.

Putting on a favorite holiday tape or CD as you wrap the presents or trim the tree was always a highly anticipated ritual - Frank, Dino, Elvis, or Bing never failed to make the season bright. In the 60’s Rock era, of course, Phil Spector’s album was a mu...

Rich and I are having a ball, reliving our memorable episodes and sharing the cream with you. Today we feature two dynamic instrumental tracks that warranted some our closer scrutiny: Hawaii 5-0 by the Ventures, and Telstar by the Tornados (written and produced by the legendary Joe Meek. 

I hear Jeff Lynne has recently been sidelined by a mysterious infection, and had to cancel some performances. We wish the revered music producer and founder of ELO good health and a quick recovery. Today, Bill and Rich, The Splendid Bohemians would like to celebrate this versatile Rock stylist by playing two cuts separated by decades, from two vastly different incarnations, but somehow identifiable as his, if only by the unique sensibility in which these cuts are marinated: Imposters of Life’s Magazine by The Idle Race, and Tweeter and the Monkey Man by The Traveling Wilburys.

Th...

Reflecting upon this landmark recording made me realize how much Arlo and his song had been fundamental to my life-long, anti-authoritarian world view. And how, years later, when the war had escalated, and my turn came up for the draft, even though I escaped with a high lottery number, I was already weighing my draft dodging options. 

I was only 14 when the song was released, but it hipped me to the absurdity of the war in Viet Nam, the legal system, and petty bureaucrats in general. Arlo accomplished this “us against them” subversion with genial irony, which he de...

Love comes in many forms - sometimes confrontational. Today’s episode is a paean to a couple of dominating dames that lit up the punk scene in the late 70s. Johnny Rotten once stated that the only person that actually frightened him was the gone too soon, Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex. That product of a Somali father and a British mother railed against consumerist culture, and her band’s career might have been short lived, but their single, Oh Bondage, Up Yours! with it’s bleating saxophone cavalry charge, blown by band mate Lora Logic, was a battle cry to...

We’re so glad you’re enjoying our meanderings down memory lane to rediscover these classic Stack o’ 45s episodes you might have missed. We’re having a ball reminiscing about some of The Splendid Bohemians finest moments, so grab a Sazerac and kick back with the boys as you dig on this pair of Delta Royals: Miss Irma Thomas, The Soul Queen of New Orleans, and the self-titled “Emperor of the Universe,” Ernie K. Doe. 

Edit Piaf once famously sang “Je Regrette Rien” (I Regret Nothing), and listening to the following heart wrenching live performances, I’m reminded that anyone claiming that spiritual stance must be in denial - or, crowing in battered defiance in order to buttress themselves against the memory of life’s cavalcade of pain and tortured conscience. For who can sincerely state that they have no regrets? No harsh word you wish you could have retracted?; No unsubstantiated suspicion that poisoned the well of a friendship or a faithful love?; Are you discounting the abuses large and small that have piled up...

As the holidays roll around, and daylight retracts, the thoughts also cloud over to infuse the mind with a grayish motif. We’re encouraged to gather our loved ones close and practice gratitude for life’s bounty. But, what if life’s gifts have been obscured by the overwhelming influence of a mortal depression, a reflection of the disconnect between what we see around us - (disease, deprivation, tyranny, man’s inhumanity to man, etc.) - and, the opposing commercial messages which exhort us to joyfully consume? 

Is this dark attitude the result of an imbalance of chemicals...

You asked, and we answered. Since you enjoyed the Bobbie Gentry vs. Joey Heatherton marathon smackdown so much, we've resurrected two more tantalizing STACK O 45s archival episodes to enrich your day and fire your imaginations: You Don't Own Me by Leslie Gore, and Is That All There Is? by the one and only Peggy Lee. 

There is an interesting theme coursing through these are three dynamic pop hits of the Brill Building era, all by one hit wonders, sung by extraordinary, up and coming stylists, and crafted by some of the most influential music men of the time: 

Cathy Carroll’s 1962 hit, “Poor Little Puppet” (produced and arranged by Stan Applebaum, written by Howard Greenfield (Neil Sedaka’s partner, here collaborating with Jack Keller); 1963’s “Girls Grow Up Faster Than Boys Do,” by Earl-Jean McCrae (with the Cookies), produced by Gerry Goffin, written by Goffin and Carole King, also with Jack Keller; and Tracey Dey...

Was it really a simpler time, way back when? 

As teenagers, Rich and I pined for those older women who seemed to embody the tidal pulse of desire. For me, it was the Delta song-spinner Bobbie Gentry, whose Ode to Billie Joe, a mystery delivered in honeyed, but troubling tones, captured the world's - and, my imagination; for Rich, it was the slinky seductress Joey Heatherton, who complicated his yearnings by aligning herself with Bob Hope on those USO tours during the Viet Nam war. 

The way podcast Stack of 45s would work was that Ri...

In the mood for some baseball? 

Of course you are; it’s still our national pastime, after all, despite the threat of encroachment by football, soccer, basketball, Nascar and Monster Trucks. And now that the innovation of the pitch clock has trimmed down the times of games, it’s a little more dynamic than it used to be back in those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summers past. 

This World Series has been a humdinger, breaking several records, but it ain't over yet - The series is tied at 3 games each, with the final deciding game t...

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is one of the best depictions of the creative process that I’ve ever seen, exploring where an artist’s ideas come from: those sources, personal and environmental that are processed via one’s family history, dreams, desires - and are then delivered through said artist’s private relationship with their tools - (in this case the Tascam Portastudio, Echoplex reverb unit, and a water-damaged boombox). I was thrilled by that examination, and by Bruce’s steadfast protection of his lo-fi masterpiece when it was being threatened by corporate pressure to compromise. 

Jeremy...

IT IS TIME TO WALK WITH THE ZOMBIES! '
WELCOME TO THE PORTAL NO ONE LEAVES ALIVE.
HALLOWEEN IS UPON US, AND WHAT BETTER WAY TO CELEBRATE THIS TERRIFYING TRADITION THAN A "DIG THIS" JOURNEY INTO THE THE NIGHT OF THE VAMPIRE.
YOU WILL BE TRANSPORTED AND EDUCATED WITH DELIGHTFUL DREAD AS WE VISIT THE TALE OF ROCK AND REAPER ICON ROKY ERICKSON, A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SPOOKY SPLENDOR OF HALLOWEEN AND THE MEMORY OF JOHN ZACHERLE, THE HEAD MASTER OF THE GHOUL SCHOOL OF OUR YOUTH.
ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!!!
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