Passengers – County Highway

Obituary

Mr. Magic

Clive Davis defined an era of popular American music that ended with his death

The Last Mogul

He argues, threatens, and cajoles, even from beyond the grave.

By David Samuels

Music lives inside our heads. That’s not entirely true, though. The music we live by is the creation of individual songwriters and musicians, who hear what we hear, but in a different way, and then they give it back to us, through the channels of their own mastery, and of their own particular psyches, which are unique to them. Who really knows what Bob Dylan is thinking about when he writes his American folk songs, which are not really folk songs, or what he thinks about when he performs on stage, with musicians who fill in the blanks of Bob Dylan’s own musical imagination. Sometimes he gets bored of what he’s hearing, the same way that we do. Why? Because he got bored, even though his music is ours, too, as part of the soundtrack of our lives. The phrase “soundtrack of our lives,” is another giveaway, though. American music is, or was, in its heyday, a vast commercial enterprise. For every Bob Dylan, for every Joni Mitchell, or Bruce Springsteen, or Prince, or Dionne Warwick, …

Dispatch

Reservation Cowboy

A Lakota boy’s rite of passage in South Dakota

Which one are you, cowboy or Indian?

Any man can be a cowboy. But first you have to become a man.

The day is the fourth of July, Independence Day to some. “Nope,” Mom clarifies, “Firecracker Day.” On this Firecracker Day, the boy is sat in the kitchen in the morning, messing with his mom as she fits her cowboy hat to her head.“This is my Fourth of July shirt,” Mom boasts, tugging the bottom corners of a yellow tee to show the face of a Native American man and his caption: “I loved America before it was called America.” Asked who the old man on the shirt is, the mother and son laugh to each other and mutter, “some ole Indun.” Then they slip on their cowboy boots and load their horses in the trailer, pack the saddles and halters.For three years the boy hasn’t rodeoed, a sad span which sums to almost a quarter of his life. This national holiday may be just another day to the boy — albeit one in which he can light off his fireworks — but it’s actually more remarkable than that. He’s back to riding in the ring.The boy is big-boned, with broad shoulders and hips like his daddy. He has …