Apologies for the lack of Rock Songbook posts lately . . . I’ve been in vacation and family mode, now replaced with beginning of semester mode.
So here’s a link to the other great conservative commentator on popular music, Scott Johnson of Powerline, talking today about Joan Baez . Johnson sometimes tags his music posts as Sunday Morning Coming Down, and his music posts are far more straightforward than my egg-heady Songbook ones, and much more about what’s good in music, particularly in live music today. What’s good to Johnson’s ears is usually in the rootsy, country-and-soul grounded traditions of American music. He’ll find no disagreement from me on that—my focus on rock is more for its cultural significance than for its musical quality.
More Songbook soon, and for newcomers, you can check out my posts by entering Rock Songbook into the First Things search bar—my “Blowin’ in the Wind” post on non-pacifistic pacifism serves as a nice expansion of Johnson’s comments on Baez’s sometimes un-peaceful “pacifism.”
Politics-wise, the post of the day seems to be Erick Erickson’s case that Santorum is a social-con statist , a big-government conservative. Sobering, yet as Erickson admits, not necessarily a case for Romney over Santorum. Also hard to judge, especially now, many of the votes listed, but do check out the list he provides.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
