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Senior smoking cannabis

Lighting Up Later in Life

Last spring, an analysis based on the National Survey of Drug Use and Health found that herb use in the prior year among people over 65 had jumped 75 percent from 2015 to 2018, from 2.4 percent of that group to 4.2 percent. By 2019, use had reached 5 percent. Read the full story in the NY Times.

Paul McCartney

McCartney Releases New Solo Album

Paul McCartney released ‘McCartney III’ today, a homemade solo album recorded during the pandemic. Read the review in Rolling Stone.

A White Woman, Racism and a Poodle

A woman is repeatedly pulled over for no apparent reason until she realizes her poodle, who rides in the front seat, has been mistaken for a black man. Read the essay here.

The Moon Landing Inspired Pink Floyd’s Most Overlooked Song

50 years ago today Pink Floyd commemorated the moon landing with an improvised, seven and a half minute performance of a song titled, “Moonhead”, a spacey, atmospheric piece commissioned by the BBC that featured “cosmic guitar effects, pulses of percussion, and Waters’s ominously descending bass line,” “an eerie piece of improvisation that translates the breathtaking awe of the moon landing into music.”

The song was mostly lost to obscurity until being released in 2016 as part of the box set titled, “The Early Years 1965–1972” but as The Atlantic article says, “For seven and a half minutes on the night of July 20, 1969, Pink Floyd took thousands of BBC viewers to the moon. Of course, two men were already there: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo 11 astronauts who became the first human beings to set foot on the lunar surface. However, the members of Pink Floyd—David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright—weren’t using science, calculus, and technology to transport people through space on that fateful evening. They were using music.”

Read the entire article here.

New Bruce Hornsby: “Absolute Zero”.

From the NY Times review: “One way for a songwriter to invigorate a long career is to keep breaking routines, to change up methods and parameters and solve different puzzles with every album. It’s a modus operandi that has carried Bruce Hornsby from radio hits in the 1980s through bluegrass, jazz, a stint in the Grateful Dead and, lately, collaborations with a younger-generation fan, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. “Absolute Zero,” his 21st album, is one more daring, rewarding turn in his catalog: 10 knotty, thoughtful yet rambunctious songs that juggle scientific concepts, history and human relationships.” Read the whole review here.

Robert Plant, Party of One. (With Friends, Too.)

The NY Times reviews Robert Plant’s new album. Read about it here.

Tom Petty’s Last Rolling Stone Interview

In his only sit-down interview on his final tour, he talked loving the Heartbreakers, hating “Zombie Zoo” and why he was having so much fun onstage. Read the interview here.

Review: Roger Waters Flays Modern Dystopia on First Rock LP in 24 Years

“‘Picture a shithouse with no fucking drains/Picture a leader with no fucking brains,’ snarls Roger Waters near the start of his first proper rock LP in nearly 25 years, unsubtle as a hammer between the eyes.” Read the entire Rollingstone review here.