Beginnings

Beginnings. Well...

Beginnings is a non-canonical album by the Allman Brothers Band. Their third album, At Fillmore East, was their commercial breakthrough, and in the wake of its success their record label repackaged their first two low-selling albums (the eponymous debut and Idlewild South) as a two-LP set called Beginnings. Brought to the public's attention anew, the earlier work found a ready audience. So we see that what are called beginnings may in fact be second (or even later) drafts. The fact that you don't have to get things right the first time is a great comfort as one advances through life.

The name of this blog, "Crosscut Saw" comes from a blues song best known in its performance by Albert King, one of the great electric bluesmen. It's rather unlikely that its salacious nature will be reflected in the posts here, but it's a great song, I needed a name, so there you go.

My favorite cultural critic these days is Gore Vidal, which may be due to the fact that he is an erudite, perceptive, and perspicacious analyst of Western society, or may just mean that I share his prejudices. The breadth of his interests is one of the things that I admire about him, and in my own more circumscribed fashion I will try to do something here similar to what he does in his essays: offer commentary on a wide range of cultural matters, attempting a balance of the well- and lesser-known, and offering, with a little luck, a useful perspective not found elsewhere. With a little luck.

In any event, this trial balloon is tugging at its moorings, and it's time to let it loose into the boundless empyrean. Waving farewell to the black-and-white flatland, we lift off and peer hopefully into the future. See you there.