Billy Joel To Release New Song Thursday

by Kevin Burton    Is it just that easy, like flipping a switch?    Guess we’ll find out Thursday, when Columbia Records drops the first new Billy Joel single in 17 years, a song called “Turn The Lights Back On.”    “In a press release from his label, Columbia Records, the song is said to …

New Beatles Song Is Neither Now Nor Then

by Kevin Burton    Think of the individual Beatles’ colossal talents, with egos to match. Think of the group putting together an album.    It’s John Lennon trying to get his songs on the record, Paul McCartney doing the same and George Harrison fighting to be heard at all.    There is creativity, artistry, but …

One Final Encore For The Beatles

by Kevin Burton    I’m guessing the final Beatles song, to be released later this week, will be neither a bang, nor a whimper.    Or maybe it will be a bang, and a whimper and everything in between. That would be fitting for a band that was and is “ way beyond compare” to …

Carolina And The Mind Of James Taylor

by Kevin Burton    You can take the boy from Carolina but you will never extract Carolina from James Taylor.    That’s how it works. Our inner compass points toward home. When we can’t be there physically, our minds take us there. Sometimes it’s better that way.    Just as Penny Lane is in the …

Lieber & Stoller’s “Kansas City” A Classic

by Kevin Burton The musical catalog of lyricist Jerry Lieber and pianist Mike Stoller has been described as “some of the most authentic rhythm and blues that white Jewish guys ever wrote.”     Eight years before Norman Mailer published “The White Negro,” these two transplanted easterners submerged themselves in the LA black culture and began …

I Guess Static Cling Is A Thing After All

by Kevin Burton    Serving up quibbles and bits for Saturday breakfast on Page 7.  Stray ideas, quick hitters, random asides.    It’s food for thought, albeit maybe not real deep thought…..    So, I spent the first 90 percent of my workday Friday with a washcloth stuffed inside my shirt. I put on a …

A New Beatles Song? We’ll Take It!

by Kevin Burton    From a beloved uncle or a dear friend who has passed away, you find a previously unknown letter. How precious is that?    It’s a piece of that person that you never had, at a time when you thought there would be no more glimpses into their being. Would you not …

Burton Ride Service Delivers (For Me)

by Kevin Burton    The following is a product/service review for the Burton Ride Service, located in South Central Kansas.    The service was formally established in 2012. Terms and conditions for this service are written between the lines of a 2012 marriage license obtained in Sedgwick County, Kansas.    This review is written and …

“Backward And Forward” And My Memories

by Kevin Burton     I guess there’s a reason why melody and memory aren’t far apart in the dictionary. They go together like peas and porridge.     And, for those who think there is something pejorative in the term “one-hit wonder,” well what about all those no-hit nobodies?    We’re all doing our best then, …

Wife To The Rescue of Alexa And Me

by Kevin Burton    My songwriting is punctuated by bursts of creativity, drive and joy but it swims in a vast ocean of self-doubt.    If confidence were gun powder, I couldn’t blow up an apple.  My confidence is like that sorry little piece of fat they call pork, in a huge can of beans, …