The Arts

Alabama Guitar Slinger Wayne Perkins Dies at 74

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By Glynn “Cowboy” Wilson – BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Alabama guitar slinger Wayne Perkins, whose playing in the early days of Rock ‘n’ Roll inspired Southern Rock bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd and influenced British Rock bands like The Rolling Stones, and whose lead guitar licks helped make Bob Marley’s Reggae music internationally famous, died on Monday…

Long Live Rock ‘N’ Roll: Remembering the Band Chicago

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Tales From the MoJo Road – By Glynn Wilson – COULTERVILLE, Calif. – “I just want to be free … free of all the hurt … all the pain … end those lonely hours … those lonely days, yeah, yeah…” Someone could definitely write those lyrics now and I could relate, as I’m sure many…

Still Thinking Differently, Apple Computer Turns 50

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Tales From the MoJo Road – By Glynn Wilson – COULTERVILLE, Calif. – As Apple turns 50, I can’t help but think back on the turning point for the company when Steve Jobs came back in 1997, the year I turned 40. I will never forget the ad credited with bringing the company back, complete…

Movie Night – Papa: Hemingway in Cuba, This Property is Condemned

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Editor’s Note: We don’t review that many movies here, only the ones we think hold historical and/or literary significance. This week, we found two interesting movies on streaming services to talk about, “Papa: Hemingway in Cuba” and “This Property Is Condemned,” starring Robert Redford and Natalie Wood. Movie Night – By Glynn Wilson – Maybe…

Winnie the Pooh: E-Book

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Title: Winnie-the-Pooh Author: A. A. Milne Illustrator: Ernest H. Shepard Release date: January 3, 2022 [eBook #67098] Most recently updated: December 31, 2024 Language: English Original publication: Canada: McClelland & Stewart, Ltd, 1926 Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan, Iona Vaughan, David T. Jones and the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net EBook of Winnie-the-Pooh,…

Who Will Write and Sing the New American Pie?

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The Big Picture – By Glynn “Cowboy” Wilson – MUSCLE SHOALS, Ala. – Who will write the new American Pie for this tumultuous time in history? Camping for a few days down by the Tennessee River and contemplating our future – or if we even have one – I doubt it will be Taylor Swift…

Does Southern Hospitality Still Exist?

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What about Christian charity? – “You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood … back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which…

Wayne Perkins: The Story of a Swamper And a Sideman

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There for the Birth of Southern Rock in 1969, he took the Muscle Shoals swampy sound to London and blended it with the Rasta island beat, creating a new sound that transformed Reggae for mainstream audiences in Europe and America. He then added this flavor to The Rolling Stones sound, after helping to create it…

Nobody Really Knows Me: A Rock and Roll Journey

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By Glynn “Cowboy” Wilson – BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Close to 300 friends and followers of Birmingham musician Wayne Perkins, many from the east side of town who came of age in the 1970s listening to the Alabama Power Band play at The Crossroads in Roebuck, nearly filled the Steiner Auditorium at the Birmingham Museum of…

Lilly Ledbetter of Alabama, Champion of Pay Equality, Dies at 86

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Staff Report – Lilly Ledbetter, whose lawsuit against her employer paved the way for the Fair Pay Act of 2009 and who dedicated decades of her life to fighting for equal pay, died in Alabama on Saturday, her family said in a statement. She was 86. The cause was respiratory failure, the statement said, and…

To Build a Fire by Jack London

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Editor’s Note: To Build a Fire is a short story by American author Jack London. John Griffith Chaney was his real name. He was born on Jan. 12, 1876 and died on Nov. 22, 1916 at the age of 40 on the sleeping porch in a cottage on his ranch in Glen Ellen, California. London…

The Secret But True Story of Network News and The Happy Pill

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Satire – Fiction – Film Proposal -  By Glynn Wilson -  WASHINGTON, D.C. — Here’s a movie script idea for Netflix or one of the other streaming companies. FADE UP FROM BLACK – A secret cabal of corporate executives are huddled in a conference room in a New York skyscraper. They are watching video clips…

Operation Zap: A Novel and Film by Aaron Murphy

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Editor’s Note: In 1992, while working as a staff writer and reporter for a chain of newspapers on the Gulf Coast, I stumbled onto a dangerous story involving electromagnetic fields and pulses being developed by Naval Intelligence in Pensacola, Florida. The stories I wrote about it were so controversial that a rogue agent working for…

Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken

By Robert Frost – Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim,…

A Visit from St. Nicholas

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By Clement Clark Moore – ‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds; While visions of sugar-plums…