Run-DMSteve

  • Part IV: Welcome to Endsville

    Our Spotlight Team’s examination of the lounge side of the moon concludes with an Englishman who is usually categorized as “blue-eyed soul” (like The Righteous Brothers) but who is actually a much more complicated man (like Shaft). Rock Swings: On the Wild Side of Swing released in 2006 Paul Young…

  • Diversity gut check!

    To prolong the suspense, or the agony, of our Spotlight Team’s series on lounge versions of pop songs, we pause tonight to consider the question Frank Sinatra would surely ask if he were still with us: How am I supposed to swing with the broads when it’s nothin’ but lugs…

  • Ol’ Blue Eyes is back. Look busy.

    This is Part III of our investigation of Las Vegas and what the Rat Pack can do with rock ’n’ roll. Tonight the Spotlight Team revisits a record I reviewed in 2013. Rock Swings released in 2005 Here’s what I said: I respect Paul Anka for his creativity; he wrote…

  • If Sinatra was still around, he’d smack you up, bitch

    In Part II of our series on rock and other genres poured through the coffee filter of what I’m loosely calling “lounge,” our Spotlight Team turns to the man who believes he’s cheddar, the singular most popular cheese in the world, when he’s not even Venezuelan beaver cheese and in…

  • If it’s Sinatra’s world and we just live in it, how come he didn’t take us with him when he died?

    Plenty of classical and jazz musicians have crossed over to rock ’n’ roll, but not many crooners. Where are the interpreters in the style of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, and Tony Bennett? There’s a stream of jazz musicians interpreting rock today, and as for classical musicians, that stream…