Dive Right In


Lake Street Dive is my new jam. The whole discography. I’ve been listening to it all
in anticipation of today’s release of their latest album, Bad Self-Portraits.


Cover to Lake Street Dive album 'Bad Self-Portraits' — members posing stiffly in a drawing room in front of wall adorned with photos of them making goofy faces

The band, whose members met at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music, consists of Rachael Price (lead vocals), Mike “McDuck” Olson (guitar, trumpet, backing vocals), Bridget Kearney (acoustic bass, backing vocals), and Mike Calabrese (drums, backing vocals).

I guess I’d describe their music as stripped-down indie pop/rock liberally inflected with jazz, blues, and soul. Maybe that sounds like a little bit of everything, but Lake Street Dive is also focused and distinctive — at once familiar and not quite like anything I’ve heard in way too long.

Yesterday and Today


High crane shot of The Beatles on set of 'The Ed Sullivan Show' with full stage and cameras in view
The Ed Sullivan Show 17.19 photo © 1964 SOFA Entertainment.

I’m a little surprised at how emotional I got watching the Beatles tribute earlier tonight.

His Story


Of all the striking details in March Book One — and there are more than a few —
what I keep coming back to is this: At the age of five, John Lewis began preaching to
his family’s chickens.

Title; protesters with signs; John Lewis and others at a lunch counter

Lewis, an organizer of the March on Washington in 1963 and since 1987 the U.S. Representative for Georgia’s Fifth District, is a great storyteller. March is a great story. I’ve just left those sentences alone after too much time spent considering adjectives other than “great” due to how easy and vague the word is, but it’s apt.