The Cinch Review

Reagan (2024 Movie)

Sean Curnyn — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 15:52:03 +0000

Yours truly is rarely to be found at the multiplex, but I guess it was spiritually impossible for me not to go see the new Reagan film, given that Bob Dylan recorded a special tune for it (Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In”). It’s conceivable I would have gone out to see it anyway, but …

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Swing Fever with Rod Stewart and Jools Holland

Sean Curnyn — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 15:26:06 +0000

How should you rate the importance of any new album release (to the extent any album has any importance at all in this benighted era)? Will it lead to riots in the streets, protests at the barricades, or a new musical trend that sweeps the world? Will it inspire a popular new haircut or a …

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Bob Dylan’s Christmas Revisited

Sean Curnyn — Sun, 24 Dec 2023 21:02:06 +0000

One of the special treats for dedicated Bob Dylan fans this year was the publication of Ray Padgett’s book Pledging My Time: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members. It contains 40 interviews with musicians who have played live with Dylan from his earliest days right up to (nearly) the present day. And just a few …

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Three Great Shane MacGowan Songs

Sean Curnyn — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 16:51:07 +0000

With all that’s going on in the world, it might be argued that not too much notice needs to be taken of the long-anticipated death of a (formerly) alcoholic pop musician at the age of 65. Does it really matter? Well, yes, I think; to the civilized, or what remains of them, everything matters, by …

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We Need To Get Fred Astaire Back

Sean Curnyn — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 23:51:39 +0000

Does the world seem to you, as it does to me, to be more than just a little off-kilter these days? The air is filled with histrionics, people’s heads are bouncing from one extreme to another, there are nagging portents of disaster (every time the latest disaster finishes); there is a sense that the guide …

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Tony Made It Happen

Sean Curnyn — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 17:03:40 +0000

This writer’s gratitude for the life of Tony Bennett is directly related to what was his single-minded mission, artistically speaking, and that was to spread the love of the kind of music he loved to sing, that which we call The Great American Songbook; the songs of Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, …

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A Biblical Pet Peeve

Sean Curnyn — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 00:31:20 +0000

It is one of the harshest responses Jesus is ever reported to have delivered to someone seeking his help; indeed, it’s arguably the only occasion recorded in the gospels where he responded to a sincere supplicant in a harsh manner. It is when, in initially rejecting her plea, he seems to compare a Gentile woman …

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Frank Sinatra’s Come Swing with Me!: A Revelation in Mono

Sean Curnyn — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 23:10:16 +0000

Who says there’s any such thing as settled science? And it’s where science and art meet that we find ourselves, in a collision of controversies where we may ultimately prove that no fact is ever too old to be upended. In other words, I came across, in a local thrift store, a monophonic LP edition …

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Ai, Yai, Yai: Artificial Intelligence Really Arrives

Sean Curnyn — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 22:51:55 +0000

I personally made the above image of the crossed-out robot to symbolize “AI Free Zone,” in order to stick it on my website. It took me days. Shucks, using AI, it probably would have taken mere seconds. But then that would have defeated the purpose. (And try explaining that to a robot.) For years we’ve …

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