LORD BUCKLEY

Hipsters, Flipsters and finger poppin' Daddies--Knock me your lobes! I come here not to jive his sweet double Hipness, but to swing wit' 'em. Now dig this, all you Cats and Kittens and Studs and Stallions; this lame bit I'm puttin' down won't hip you to the actual Genius that was his Lordship. For that you need to hop in your short, and groove on down to the wax museum to pick yourself up some sides of the swingingest Cat what ever swung.

And if you do, m' lawds and ladies of the Royal Court, today's Hipstory lesson will run the gamut all the way down from Jonah and the Nazz to The Hip Ghan, with stops along the way for the Gasser, that poor misunderstood Marquis de Sade and maybe even that story written on the inside of your eyelids.

Grab your pith helmets and your spinnin' wheel baby, and dig the hippest jive in all of Mother India (or anywhere else too).

Astral Weeks

There is an exchange between Jack Black and a fellow vinyl devotee somewhere near the midpoint of High Fidelity, in which Black's surly record store clerk says "Dude, I can't believe you don't own this F***ing album!"


That's somewhat akin to how i feel when snooping through someone's record collection (given the opportunity i will always check out people's CD stack, it helps with the snap judgements) and i don't find a copy of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks.

Ultimately more uplifting than a bucket of Paxil, this album nevertheless goes to all the scary places of the human psyche. Maybe it's the fact that it explores those places (the major themes here include obsession, addiction and death) while maintaining a shimmering beauty that make it so powerful.

We do know that it was a happy accident, Morrison did little, to no communicating with the talented jazz musicians (Richard Davis is unbelievable) assigned to his session. Despite (because of?) this, Morrison would never approach this level of genius again, and has in fact spent most of his time disowning it. Ours is not to disown, but to own.It's going to be OK.