Category Archives: Commentary

Jeff Beck – A Musician with Attitude – RIP

Jeff Beck…”nobody plays like him. The reason for this is simple: nobody can.”

A Eulogy by Dawoud Kringle

Jeff BeckOn Wednesday, January 11th, 2023, the music world was shocked when Jeff Beck, one of the greatest electric guitarists to ever walk this earth, succumbed to bacterial meningitis. He was 78.

Sometime in the 80s, I saw Jeff Beck at Madison Square Garden when he was on the same bill with Stevie Ray Vaughn (another great guitarist who we lost much too soon). What a performance! At the end, the two did a duet that tore the roof off the place. I have no words to describe it; you had to have been there.

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Ghouls? What?

Ghouls – An Editorial by Dawoud Kringle

“The howling of ghouls is a familiar howl drawing you to the abyss.” – Rumi

For those of you who did not grow up on Vincent Price movies like I did, a ghoul is a malignant djinn from ancient Arabic folklore, and introduced into European folklore in the 18th century. Ghouls are notoriously well known for defiling graves and eating the corpses.

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A Homage to THE BAND’s “The Weight”

Text by Bruce Gallanther (DMG Newsletter for December 2nd, 2022)

“The Weight” by The Band, from Music from Big Pink, released in 1968

I pulled into Nazareth, was feelin’ about half past dead
I just need some place where I can lay my head
“Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?”
He just grinned and shook my hand, “No” was all he said

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Commentary: Iran Rising, Woman, Life, Freedom Movement

By Dawoud Kringle

Before I get to the meat & potatoes about the subject of this article, I must offer a few caveats.

First, I am a Muslim, and this is an article about Iran. So from time to time, I will speak with a Muslim voice – but perhaps not the voice you expected to hear. Second, I have some very specific ideas about geopolitics that some may find at best, interesting and at worst, disturbing or incomprehensible. Finally, I am going to present some very personal thoughts on a few things related to the subject matter and the editorial context in which this is being presented.

You are doubtless aware of the troubles happening in Iran.

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vote

BRUCE LEE FROM DMG SAYS, “PLEASE GET OUT & VOTE!

Text by Bruce Gallanther (Downtown Music Gallery, November 4th, 2022)

“Blow your harmonica, son!” says Uncle Frank Z.

Up until the time I was 13, when I bought the first album by the Mothers of Invention, titled Freak-Out!, I never really questioned the fact that the U.S. was called “the land of the free & the home of the brave”. The concept of “Freedom” always appealed to me but I never considered how much we were being manipulated into believing that things that are not really the truth of what is actually going on around us. Protest music/songs by Bob Dylan, PF Sloan’s “The Eve of Destruction” and “Trouble Every Day” by the Mothers often made me reconsider my view of what is just and what is unfair or just not right. I’ve shed many skins and worn many hats over time: being a hippie in the sixties, being a proghead in the seventies, being a hard-core punk in the eighties and then discarding all of those pigeonholes as I got older to become a Wise Old Man (sometimes) in my post millenium Golden Years.

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