These Days: Sunday, July 2nd, 2017
New Music: I don’t like the new Jay-Z album: 4:44 (grade: B) that much but I can’t stop listening to it, it’s addictive in its blahness, it is such a disappointing and dreary album that it flies in the face of his entire career. No I.D. uses all too average samples and beats while not trap, and not Drake, have the same downward vision of them both. The great Peter Perrett releases his first album in 21 years and it is a masterpiece of Perrett sound (Grade: A)
Old Music: I’ve been listening to Ricky Nelson and Bobby Vee lately, I believe I am old fashioned enough to prefer them to the boy bands of 2017. I love current music, especially hip hop, but the songs aren’t strong enough.
Sports: Alright, Knicks are now out of three years of complete futility, but the Knicks haven’t been there since 2001 when Jeff Gundy left halfway through the season, the scumbag. 1996 was the one -but if in the playoffs you are gonna suspend half the team guess what’s gonna happen. Anyone? Sixteen seasons later and New York is exhausted with the Knicks.
More Sports: The Yanks lose despite new call up Clint Frazier hitting a homer and a double at his major league debut. A .500 team, two games out of first place. Mets won.
Concerts: A quiet week coming up unless I decide to go to the Steez gig, if I don’t there is only James Taylor. Fast forward to the week of July 10th and there is Mellencamp and Ditto -though not at the same gig.
Movies: “Baby Driver” compares with “Pulp Fiction” as a gangster movie gender bender but there is something missing for all its hyperactive playlist from heaven vibes, and that is characters who seem actually alive. It is too unbelievable, too not clever enough, the plot is weak: a bit like modern pop, it sounds great but the song isn’t there. It does look AWESOME . Grade: B+
The EPA: “In the four months since he took office as the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, Scott Pruitt has moved to undo, delay or otherwise block more than 30 environmental rules, a regulatory rollback larger in scope than any other over so short a time in the agency’s 47-year history, according to experts in environmental law.”
