According to an article that can be found in the Time magazine on-line archives, the synthetic fabric Qiana (“kee-ah-nah”)—the name the re...

An update on my post from yesterday titled “Yodel”: Bent Sørensen (find the link to his blog on the right) kindly shared the URL for a short...

Earlier this month I posted a blog entry on Continuum’s 33 & 1/3 series of books examining classic albums of the rock era. A couple of ...

According to the OED , the English word “yodel” is derived from the German jodeln , meaning, “to sing or warble with interchange of the ordi...

The name of the early Sixties popular dance called the “watusi” is obviously African (for instructions on how to dance it, go here ), and wh...

The word ictus is derived from the Latin icere , to hit with a stroke, the stress placed upon an accentuated syllable. Etymologically speak...

News reports indicate that Mitch Mitchell (at the right in the picture, with Hendrix and Noel Redding, left), the drummer for the Jimi Hendr...

There is an oft-repeated story that once when Chet Atkins, at the time the country & western music producer at RCA Victor, was asked to ...

The tarantula is clearly the favored arachnid both in music and the movies. Not only does the tarantula have a movie named in its honor (the...

A “juke” or “juke joint,” according to answers.com , is “a roadside or rural establishment offering liquor, dancing, and often gambling and ...

Although typically defined as a type of guitar, the pedal steel guitar is actually an unusual instance of a stringed instrument becoming a k...

I only today learned that Jimmy Carl Black (pictured at the far left on the back cover of the Mothers’ album Freak Out! ) the former drummer...