The weekend of December 12-14, 2014 will find Seattle- and San Francisco-area Trekkers convening at Creation Entertainment’s Official Star Trek Convention. Among the celebrity guests appearing at the concurrent conventions is none other than Jonathan Frakes, aka Commander Riker on seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation and its four feature films (two of which Frakes directed). We caught...
Music Review: Bob Dylan – The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11
Volume 11 of Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series offers a monstrous amount of material in a handsome, boxed-set package. Simply put, Columbia/Legacy’s presentation treats The Basement Tapes as they should be: a culturally and artistically important historical document. After all, the whole concept of the bootleg record started with these recordings. Bob Dylan, staying far out of site of the psychedelia-dominated...
Bentley’s Bandstand: December 2014
Time to clear the decks with a year-end round-up of albums and a novel released in 2014 that made it through the deluge. Each and every one of these 40 titles is worthy of interested ears and open eyes. And don’t forget to pay respect to Father Time on December 13 (12/13/14). It’s the last sequential date possible this century....
Blu-ray Review: The Expendables 3
Arriving on Blu-ray and DVD on November 25 is Sylvester Stallone’s latest all-star action blowout, The Expendables 3. Those who decried the PG-13 rating will eagerly anticipate the Blu-ray’s unrated edition (the theatrical cut is included as well), but don’t expect anything too different. The unrated version only adds five minutes and they don’t add up to any significant difference....
Sochi Update and Infostrada Sports’ Virtual Medal Table
Written by Ray N. Olsen, Member of the International Society of Olympic Historians Below is the final updated independent prediction of the medal count for teams in the 2014 Winter Olympics by Infostrada Sports.You will note that while the US is first (great) for Gold Medals by two over second place Norway (wow, they only have a total of 4...
Music Review: Paul McCartney Archive Collection – Wings at the Speed of Sound
Boasting possibly the most noticeably improved audio fidelity of Paul McCartney’s Archive Collection reissue series thus far, Wings at the Speed of Sound arrives as a newly remastered double-disc set (available November 4). The deluxe book edition adds a DVD and far more elaborate packaging. Notable for being the most democratic of McCartney’s Wings-billed albums (only six of the 11...
Music Review: Paul McCartney – NEW – Collector’s Edition (2 CD/1 DVD)
What a great time to be a Paul McCartney fan. On the eve of the long-awaited next installments in the Paul McCartney Archive Collection (Venus and Mars and Wings at the Speed of Sound), Concord Music Group issues a collector’s edition of 2013’s NEW. Packaged in a compact hardcover book case, this two-CD, one-DVD edition is sort of a like...
DVD Review: WKRP in Cincinnati – Complete Series
With the holiday season upon us, fans of classic sitcoms will certainly want to consider adding Shout! Factory’s new release of all four seasons of WKRP in Cincinnati to their wish list. Many fans never believed we’d see such a release, and with good reason. Back in 2007, WKRP’s maiden season was issued as a DVD release but it contained...
New Music for Old People: ZZ Hill, Rev. Gary Davis, Curtis Stigers, Andy Stochansky and More
This column is like the title says — its intention is to fill the gap for those of us who were satiated musically in the ’60s and then searched desperately as we aged for music we could relate to and get the same buzz from nowadaze. iTunes was the answer for me in 2003 and I have been following the...
Bentley’s Bandstand: October 2014
Pieta Brown, Paradise Outlaw. Is there a way to capture true musical transcendence in words? If so, let it happen for Pieta Brown, one of America’s treasures, someone who is still moving towards finding a fitting audience. Fortunately, Brown’s new album, co-produced by stealth partner Bo Ramsey, is the kind of creation where no explanation is needed. These captivating songs...