Mom was a music prodigy. She gave her first public piano recital at the age of four. She quit playing when she was sent to boarding school at five due to family problems. Someday I’ll write about that. Mom’s time in the boarding school led directly to her death eighty years later. Since there was…
My crimes of self-defense
September 25, 2013
When I got to college, my punk roommate Joe Cady turned me on to ska. I wasn’t really aware of it. Of course, I knew about reggae because I was a Police fanatic. One of my favorite songs of all time is “Walking on the Moon.” The bass line and tone, the melody, Sting’s plaintive…
Good old-timey nightmare
September 24, 2013
Haven’t had a nightmare like this in a long time. Though back in college, I was my present age. I shared my dorm room with Bill Carroll of KFI AM 640, Los Angeles. The room was long and narrow, like a train car, with bunk beds. Everyone else in the dorm was ecstatic at the…
Mystery is important
September 18, 2013
The possibility of life after death has been on my mind since I was six years old, when I first understood what death was, and I realized that someday I’d die. There were periods in which I couldn’t bear to think about it because I couldn’t accept either the possibility of eternal life or the…
Preach it, Gene Simmons!
September 14, 2013
I don’t have anything to say about Gene Simmons’s personal life. I did watch his reality show for a season, the one in which his children confronted him with his failings. I’ve also seen the episode where he went to Israel to meet his half-siblings and visit his father’s grave. To me he made a…
Pat Wictor the folk singer
September 12, 2013
Though my brother Pat Wictor calls himself a folk singer, he’s a lot more. Probably a roots-music singer, I guess. He was once my little brother, but that doesn’t mean much anymore. I know a lot of families retain the “older-younger” dynamic, but when you get into your fifties (Pat’s not there yet!) that’s kind…
My first act of music journalism since 2002
September 6, 2013
My first act of music journalism since 2002 was completed with Scott Thunes, of course. I enjoyed it thoroughly. An excerpt: I used to be a music journalist. It was the best job I ever had, and I loved it. Unfortunately for me, it didn’t work out. A combination of factors—mainly my own problem with…
My First Interview
September 2, 2013
Meaning the first time I was ever interviewed. Bass Musician Magazine did the honors. Here’s an excerpt: In less than a year after he first appeared from out of nowhere on the forum, Wictor’s book Ghosts And Ballyhoo: Memoirs Of A Failed L.A. Music Journalist was released. It seemed that Tom’s fateful career at BP…