For the better part of 25 years, through 2013, I published and was executive editor of The Licensing Letter, an ad-free paid subscription newsletter about licensing — applying corporate brands, entertainment franchises and other intellectual property to generate brand extensions into apparel, toys, food and additional product categories for marketing purposes and profit. What would …
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Excited to see my good friend Marty Porter’s book “Buzz Me In: Inside the Record Plant Studios” hit #1 on amazon’s Pop Artist Biographies list, #1 in Music History & Criticism, and #4 in Popular Music (behind three Taylor Swift novelty books) following a phenomenal Bob Lefsetz review two weeks prior to publication! I can …
BROOKLYN, NY Jan. 29, 2025—Seeking calm as you consider the last 10 days’ news? Glenn Gould’s Bach piano concertos and Simon Preston’s Complete Bach Organ Works (latter is 19 hours; links are Spotify) are my go-to right now. While I usually watch movies on the treadmill, the Kennedy HHS hearings this morning had me so …
The photo above is likely a not unusual bookshelf among my contemporaries. I periodically pull a book from one of many such shelves and read a random passage. This morning it is Umberto Eco’s, “The Name of the Rose,” first published in Italian in 1980 and in the U.S. in English in 1983. The year …
Attending a Bob Dylan concert is essentially placing a $200 bet against yourself. He’s not Ella Fitzgerald, who gave a masterful performance every time she stepped out on a stage. With Dylan you never know if you’re going to get an on night, an off night or simply something totally inscrutable. You’re betting on the …
We are so overwhelmed by these past weeks, months, this year that sometimes masquerades as a decade. We have gone to sleep fretting over every cough or sneeze, to the sound of helicopters circling, protesters chanting, sirens whirring. We keep our contact with the outside world to a minimum, masks on and at a distance. …
BROOKLYN, NY; Feb.26, 2020—I can’t tell you what a joy it was — and continues to be days later — to have hosted Christine Lavin performing a house concert in our home last Saturday night. We’ve had professional jazz musicians play in the past, typically as background for parties. And a young classical pianist played …
“Ask for Jane” is an important, beautifully made, moving re-telling of the true story of a group of women in the pre-Roe v. Wade 1960s who provided 11,000 illegal but safe abortions to University of Chicago women and others. Made on a shoestring budget by a clearly passionate cast and crew, the writing, acting, and …
Last-hurrah-of-summer upstate New York
BROOKLYN, NY; JULY 19, 2019—Len Chandler — folk singer, songwriter, actor, activist — walked on stage at the Newport Folk Festival late Saturday night July 20, 1969 with a piece of paper in hand. Chandler fumbled with the paper, trying to find a way to attach the lyrics on that sheet to the microphone stand. …
nightmayer 