A summary of essays on my Songs and Objects Substack that appeared in March 2024, plus one planned for March but posted in early April because having time off is nice.
1. Epiphany and What Came After: Remembering Townes Van Zandt. This was the first of two posts to remember Townes Van Zandt in the week he would have turned eighty. In this one, I provide no details about Townes or his 1977 album Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas, though I say everything that came to mind when I first tried to write about both.
2. Riding the Blue Wind: Townes Van Zandt’s Fatalism. A second TVZ piece, this one longer and focussed on the songs. Too many articles on Townes get lost in the biographical details; I wanted to return to the music.
3. Where the Needle Stops. This is the first of three pieces on the art and function of the record label. That’s record labels, not record companies (though speaking about the former inevitable involves saying something about the latter). This one looks at record labels as visual and textual icons.
4. The Art of the Record Label. This one dives into label designs used on some records in my collection. They are labels that jumped out at me while removing discs from sleeves, placing them on the turntable or watching them spin.
5. Paper Substitutes. The third and longest of my record label texts looks at how record labels function as stand-ins or substitutes for other things, such as people, events and experiences.
Late Voice 