PhotosI first saw Boz Scaggs in 1966 at the Matrix in San Francisco. He was playing in a jazz-rock combo with some cat named Steve Miller. Fast-forward 50 years and they are both award-winning senior-citizen …
May 8, 2015
I am a retired CEO of a sales and marketing company based in San Francisco. I live in South Mission Beach. I have three grandchildren and am an active surfer (longboard)...been surfing over 50 years. Also played tournament beach volleyball and played for San Diego State's first v-ball team. Also played for the Olympic Club in San Francisco in the '60s.
I have a graduate degree from San Francisco State University, and was a teaching assistant there for a year in 1967. I lived walking distance from Haight Ashbury during the Summer of Love and the birth of the counterculture and the San Francisco Sound, and saw many of the bands in person at that time: the Dead, Janis, Credence, Jefferson Airplane, Boz Scaggs, Steve Miller, Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young, etc.
I was a "real people" model for 10 years, and I wrote film reviews for 20 years (and a few album reviews) for alternative papers in S.F. I listen to all types of music with my least favorite being heavy metal and hip-hop. I love Motown, doo-wop, rock, blues, jazz and the American Songbook of old standards. My music favorites are definitely retro, but I enjoy many contemporary artists as well. And I'm not afraid to say I love American Idol and have seen every show since it's inception. I'm a liberal politically and active writing comments on political internet sites.
Articles by Alan Segal
A Fool to Care, by Boz Scaggs
American standards for an American Standard
In the 1960s, Bob Dylan provided my peers and I the soundtrack of our times, chuffing famous lines like "How does it feel/ to be on your own/ no direction home/ like a rolling stone?" …
February 20, 2015
Lucinda Williams's Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone
Singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams is an acquired taste. If you have it, Christmas came early this year with the release of her new double-disc Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone. The set collects 19 new …
December 6, 2014
The River & the Thread, by Rosanne Cash
This is Rosanne Cash's first collection of original material in eight years. The daughter of country-music royalty, Cash is done writing songs about her rebellious youth and her traumatic marriage to Rodney Crowell. Although she …
February 7, 2014
Paul McCartney's New
“Will you still need me...when I'm 64?” Yeah, even at 71 we need you, when you can still make great original music. My favorite cut on Paul McCartney’s new record is “Early Days,” an acoustic …
November 1, 2013
Jake Bugg by Jake Bugg
It was suggested that I listen to some newer artists for review, so I downloaded Jake Bugg's self-titled debut, thinking, You can't get much newer then a 19-year-old. Bugg is a British singer/songwriter who's a …
September 27, 2013
Paradise Valley, by John Mayer
After a notorious kiss and tell Playboy interview, John Mayer moved to remote Montana to escape the flack and recover from throat surgery. Lucky for us, while there he produced some of the best lyrics …
August 30, 2013
Memphis, by Boz Scaggs
The first time I saw Boz Scaggs perform live was at the Matrix club in San Francisco in the early ’60s. Scaggs and another unknown, the future "gangster of love," Steve Miller, were fronting a …
May 17, 2013
Donald Fagen's Sunken Condos
This is Donald Fagen's first album in six years and, no, it's not about condo owners underwater on their mortgages. It is another Steely Dan (minus Walter Becker) easy-listening mix of smooth jazz shot through …
February 1, 2013