Posts by Andy Wagstaff

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that Library users have suggested we acquire!

Provided are some great preview tracks for each. Just click on the titles to be taken to the catalog.

El Duque de la Bachata by Joan Soriano FIND OF THE MONTH!!! If you live in New York City, 

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that Library users have suggested we acquire!

Provided are some great preview tracks for each. Just click on the titles to be taken to the catalog. 

Green Rocky Road by Karen Dalton

FIND OF THE MONTH!

Karen Dalton's early recordings are 

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that  Library users have suggested we acquire!

Provided are some great preview tracks for each. Just click on the titles to be taken to the catalog.

Bollywood Bloodbath by various

FIND OF THE MONTH! Various soundtrack gems from Bollywood B 

The New York Public Library's Office of Central Collection Development fields dozens of requests to purchase new material from our patrons each month. It is a great way to enrich our collections and cover lesser-known titles and areas of interest. This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that library users have suggested we acquire!

Provided are some great preview tracks for each. Just 

The New York Public Library's Office of Central Collection Development fields dozens of requests to purchase new material from our patrons each month. It is a great way to enrich our collections and cover lesser-known titles and areas of interest.

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that library users have suggested we acquire!

Provided are some great preview tracks for each. 

The New York Public Library's Office of Central Collection Development fields dozens of requests to purchase new material from our patrons each month. It is a great way to enrich our collections and cover lesser-known titles and areas of interest.

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that library users have suggested we acquire!

Provided are some great preview 

The New York Public Library's Office of Central Collection Development fields dozens of requests to purchase new material from our patrons each month. It is a great way to enrich our collections and cover lesser-known titles and areas of interest.

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that library users have suggested we acquire!

Provided are some great preview tracks for each. Just click on the 

The New York Public Library's Office of Central Collection Development fields dozens of requests to purchase new material from our patrons each month. It is a great way to enrich our collections and cover lesser-known titles and areas of interest.

I have the pleasure of fielding those requests for music and have been introduced to some great new music this way… music I would not have known about otherwise. This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of this great music your fellow library 

Years have passed since my younger self first had his heart broken and thought for sure the world itself would never survive the trauma. It did, yet I am still amazed at just how intensely the heart can feel. I don't know how that works, that palpable knot you can get in your chest when experiencing emotion. There must be some biological explanation. The other internal organs don’t feel much if at all, unless something is seriously wrong with them. But emotions can manifest as an actual physical sensation, one that we acknowledge when we say something is "heartfelt." 

I’ve had a long-standing fascination with bands that go through dramatic style shifts, bands whose evolutionary stages must be discovered by digging through their back catalog like some fossil-rich strata of sedimentary rock, revealing forms very different from what is more currently known.

In fact, nobody 'may have missed' Fleetwood Mac. They sold millions of albums in the ‘70s, with a string of multi-platinum selling releases, including the second biggest selling album of all time (at the time, 

Here are some more learning templates you, or your favorite parent or teacher can download and use multiple times for educating your future Einsteins. Part 1 of this entry included some fun drawing and writing templates in Word for younger kids.

Now let's move on to some math templates. I have mentioned the book Microsoft Office 

The other day, I had a John Denver song stuck in my head, and I kept singing this one line over and over. My 6-year-old son remarked, "Oh, THAT'S not annoying!" Ah, the sarcastic little punk apple doesn't fall far from the tree: a good thing to keep in mind as we parents want to make sure we inspire our kids to develop good learning habits. So when my son asked me if I could print out a page like his teacher had in school, one with a box for drawing at the top and some writing lines underneath, of course I wanted to oblige. I surfed around the web and found a few things 

Konono No.1's sound is shockingly infectious and amazingly unique. The revolving-member group spent the last few decades playing traditional Bazombo trance music in the capitol city of the Congo: Kinshasa. Equal parts tradition, innovation, and accident, their sound centers on three Likembe (better known as the Mbira, or thumb organ) players, a rhythm section, three singers, and three dancers. Oh, but that is so not all of the story!...

A need to compete with the growing cacophony of the busy 

As I listen to Block Ice & Propane, I recall the other possible uniform title I considered for this blog thread: “Prone to Hyperbole”; because this collection of songs may be the most evocative set of music the universe has ever heard! It throws us in the back of a camper for a cross-country camping trip, circa 1960 or '70-something; drives us down the backroads of America; and all we have to do is just notice, every so often, our impressions along the 

In every corner of the world, as far back in history as the time machines of archaeology and anthropology can take us, music has been used by humans to communicate with the gods. It’s hard to remember in our world today, steeped as it is in the bubblegum profanity of pop culture; but Mongo Santamaria’s album, Afro-Roots, reminds us. It is a gateway into the spirit-world. The conga drum itself is our metaphysical guide, bridging the gap between the visible and invisible worlds, and thus bringing us into direct contact 

The Cave, by wife and husband team Beryl Korot (video artist) and Steve Reich (composer), is an experimental multimedia piece featuring recorded interviews set to live music. Palestinians, Israelis, and Americans are all asked about the significance of the story of Abraham and his burial place, The Cave of Machpelah, which is held sacred by Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

Interviewees are asked about the significance of Abraham to their lives, the significance of his two sons Ishmael and Isaac, and their two 

Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, for fans and critics alike, marks the point in Springsteen's songwriting where the barren landscapes of the American Dream are laid most bare.

The title song chronicles the true-crime killing spree of Charlie Starkweather and girlfriend, also the subject of 1973 film Badlands. Springsteen captures so vividly on record what is most human in the 

Years ago, while training my mind to think about deep and important stuff at university, I used to puff up my self-importance by reading books with the word "postmodern" in the title. I still couldn't explain what the term means exactly without launching into an hour-long babble that would leave you more confused than before; but if I could sum it up in one musician, I'd pick a one Mr. Omar Souleyman.

Omar Souleyman delivers the sounds to the people in the streets of Syria; he

The image of a cobweb on the front of The Books' Lost and Safe is indicative, as their unique brand of creating random sound collages often reminds me of exploring an old, deserted house, stumbling upon the relics of a remnant past.

Aged pictures hang cracked and fading on the walls, more intriguing because they were left behind, forgotten; the creaking of the stairs and the sounds of what was once a thriving house: running water, kids laughing, clanging dishes, the sounds of wind, and footsteps on a wooden floor.