We used to have a series called The Rearview Mirror on Sundays. Like many of our ideas, it eventually withered away, like a night-blooming flower that didn’t get enough nutrients from its tenders (us). It provided a vehicle for me and other writers to unearth old albums that meant something to us, and introduce them to people who might not know about them.

It was a good idea, and fun for us to do, but like everything else we do here its survival depended on the intensity of our own innate interest, which is a way of saying that we don’t force anything. Things happen naturally, or they don’t. And so it died, R.I.P., though the entire series is still available here.

I’m not really making a concerted effort to revive The Rearview Mirror today. In fact, the song that prompted me to make this post isn’t even old. But it’s a tribute to a long-lost artist and it made me re-live some treasured memories of my own, so I thought this one-off addition to the series, almost three years after it expired, was the right format. (And don’t worry, SHADES OF BLACK is still coming later today.) Continue reading »