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Posts published by “Christine Hall”

Christine Hall has been working as a journalist since the 1970s. She currently hosts a weekly radio show of  sixties music, The Sixties in 60 that can be heard every Sunday at 6 pm Eastern Time on The Barrel of Rock.

Keeping Phoebe Snow’s Music Alive in Winston-SalemTribute to Phoebe Snow poster

Keeping Phoebe Snow’s Music Alive in Winston-Salem

By Christine Hall on June 9, 2015

Tribute to Phoebe Snow posterI can’t remember the last time I heard Phoebe Snow’s “Poetry Man” on the radio. But 40 years after the song first hit the airwaves, Philip Kearns is working to make sure her music is not forgotten with a tribute show he’s been playing around the Triad for about a year now.

It’s not surprising that you don’t hear Ms. Snow on the radio, which programs almost exclusively by genre. Like many talented musicians, Phoebe Snow transcended any single genre, and the music she created measured soul, jazz, rock and pop into a blend that was distinctly her own. Coming to prominence in the middle of the 1970s, she was one of the last of the great singer/songwriters who populated the charts in the early part of that decade, and one of the last of a breed of popular musicians who eschewed pop pablum to make her own kind of music, as Cass Elliot would say.

Continue readingKeeping Phoebe Snow’s Music Alive in Winston-Salem
Incident at StarbucksStarbucks

Incident at Starbucks

By Christine Hall on June 7, 2015

Today we visited the new Harris Teeter that just opened on Reynolda Road where the Roses once stood, mainly to see if they carried Hoffman hot dogs, which is a favorite of my roommates. While there, we picked up some roasted chicken, some ice cream and a few other items, and while going through checkout, my roommate noticed that there’s a Starbucks in the store.

I like coffee and despise yuppies too much to like Starbucks, which insists on ruining gods-little-beans by adding milk, sugar or any other ingredient they can find to everything. Coffee is perfect by itself; it doesn’t need any help. But order a plain cup of joe at Starbucks, and they decide — meaning the guys and gals who, by dint of working behind the counter, are the arbiters of what passes for cool and what doesn’t — that you’re an uncouth and unsophisticated laggard who wandered in from (stereotyped cliche alert) some trailer park.

Starbucks
The headquarters for the friendly down-the-road little place where everybody knows your name and you can stay sober.
Needless to say,

But my roommate doesn’t share my disdain for corporate deceit, and asked if I would fetch for her a decaf mocha latte while she took care of paying for the groceries. No problem. I sauntered up to what looked like an ordering spot at the Starbucks counter, and waited a minute or two for the young lady who had absolutely nothing to do, to notice she had a customer.

For a while she chose to keep her attention on the store’s front door, but she eventurally turned around and without smiling or being in any way cordial asked if I wanted to order. Yup, I do, I nodded. She walked up to another ordering area, about ten feet away and told me I’d have to go to her to order. Fine. I did.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been working as a journalist since the 1970s. She currently hosts a weekly radio show of  sixties music, The Sixties in 60 that can be heard every Sunday at 6 pm Eastern Time on The Barrel of Rock.

Continue readingIncident at Starbucks

What’s In a Number?

By Christine Hall on August 7, 2008

As I usually do on my birthday, when I turned 57 on May 27th I figured out my "life lesson" number for the upcoming year. This is the number that gives me a clue as to what will be my major lesson to learn during the upcoming year, until my next birthday. This year, my lesson number is a six, which corresponds to The Lovers card in the Tarot, which I thought was great. The Lovers is Gemini, and since I’m a Gemini this would be a pie year. All I’d have to do is to just learn to be myself – and I’ve already had 57 years experience doing that.

Unfortunately, that conclusion turned out to be a case of wishful Magickal thinking. You see, nowhere in the volumes that have been written on the Tarot does it say that The Lovers means "being yourself" if you’re a Gemini. Not a word. But there’s been a lot written on how The Lovers deals with "choices."

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been working as a journalist since the 1970s. She currently hosts a weekly radio show of  sixties music, The Sixties in 60 that can be heard every Sunday at 6 pm Eastern Time on The Barrel of Rock.

Continue readingWhat’s In a Number?

Bush, Cheney and the Energy Tsars

By Christine Hall on November 9, 2004

In a way, the tragic events of 9/11 played right into the Administration’s hand.

Although Bush’s presidency was only in its seventh month, he was something of a lame duck when the twin towers fell. He had no clear mandate from the American people. In November, he’d lost the popular vote, and had only garnered enough electoral votes to claim victory by convincing the Supreme Court to accept the results of a questionable Florida election and vote count. The majority of American voters had not voted for him, and a sizable number thought he’d stolen the presidency.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been working as a journalist since the 1970s. She currently hosts a weekly radio show of  sixties music, The Sixties in 60 that can be heard every Sunday at 6 pm Eastern Time on The Barrel of Rock.

Continue readingBush, Cheney and the Energy Tsars

The Ghost of Elections Past

By Christine Hall on November 9, 2004

Los Angeles, summer of ’72: a crowd of anti-establishment types gathered outside of the Wilshire Boulevard offices of CREEP, the Committee to Re-Elect the President, to hear Jane Fonda speak on the upcoming election. Mainly, this was pretty much a garden variety event for that era; “Nixon sucks,” “end the war now,” and “legalize pot” were the agenda of the day. The crowd was polite, but not overly enthusiastic.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been working as a journalist since the 1970s. She currently hosts a weekly radio show of  sixties music, The Sixties in 60 that can be heard every Sunday at 6 pm Eastern Time on The Barrel of Rock.

Continue readingThe Ghost of Elections Past