Colin Fleming | The Smart Set

The Umbly Tumbly

Colin Fleming — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 12:37:33 +0000

Released in 1972, the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street was one of those works of art that, in its time, was seen as heralding a demise. The Stones had come to their end as a creative force of nature, or, put another way, What the hell is this mess? One might have supposed that […]

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Arthur Alexander and the Art of Listening

Colin Fleming — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 11:30:00 +0000

Have you ever learned about a set of recordings and thought, “I would like to love those?” There’s an embedded knowledge you pick up on — a kind of reader’s contact high — that the recordings would match well with who you are, who you wish to be, how you’d like to think of yourself. […]

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Beautiful and Damned

Colin Fleming — Mon, 15 May 2023 11:30:00 +0000

Having unfortunately passed through many dating sites as I navigate this life in search of a person I find hard to believe exists, I’m accustomed to the reoccurring bromides people share about their lives. They can, for instance, stay in or go out, which is quite a marvelous feat. They are all living their best […]

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Squatting in the Dust

Colin Fleming — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 11:30:00 +0000

In the early summer of 1983, aged seven, I entered my parents’ bedroom holding a baseball card I’d just plucked from a pack purchased at the store down the street for the princely sum of a dime and a quarter. I was a ruthless gatherer of coins totaling that figure, or, better yet, seventy cents, […]

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You Are

Colin Fleming — Mon, 20 Feb 2023 12:32:00 +0000

There was a time when Radiohead’s “Creep” was a song beloved by frat boy spring breakers who had exactly zero interest in anything else by the band. They liked “Creep” not because it induced any necessary searching of souls, but because it 1. Felt like it could be about you when you were drunk and […]

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more than a door

Colin Fleming — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 13:25:57 +0000

Is there a form of album in all of popular music more useful, more misunderstood, and then most often discarded as the greatest hits record? If you love music, you’re certain to have had a relationship with them, though I’d wager they’ve been akin to an old flame for a long time now, warmly remembered, […]

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Guaranteed to Keep You

Colin Fleming — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 12:30:00 +0000

Even by the standards of the golden age of radio, the run for the program Suspense was extreme in length. It positioned itself — and certainly marketed itself — as the gold standard in what were called thrillers at the time, and was arguably the most prestigious radio show — an audible legacy brand — […]

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Thanks for Coming

Colin Fleming — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 12:30:00 +0000

Save for certain varieties of romantic trysts, we like to think our relationships — especially our friendships — are built to last. We don’t enter into them so that they can end. Our aim is that they’ll remain present, adding to our lives whatever it was that drew us to that relationship in the first […]

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Actually Scary

Colin Fleming — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 12:17:35 +0000

Fear is a highly personalized emotion, which is a key component of what makes fear fear. A person may be ravaged by fear, as if their entire world and all they care about is coming down inside of them, and life will never be the same, nor even livable again, while simultaneously someone standing two […]

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Post-Bop Bop Man

Colin Fleming — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 11:16:00 +0000

Let’s play a game of trumpet without any of us having to play trumpet, shall we? Favorite trumpet player as a trumpet player: Who you got? That line of inquiry, when it comes to trumpeters, can be a revealing device. I would expect that a lot of people opt for Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, or […]

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