Millions Of Blackbirds

Millions of Blackbirds

I once met a woman from a working class city in Northern France, and I asked her what she thought of Paris. With an air of prototypical French disgust, she sneered: “It’s not France.”

Since then I’ve often wondered: Can a tourist visiting the United States go to New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco and return home with any clue of what our country is about? More and more, the cosmopolitan cities of the world have more in common with each other than the nation that surrounds them.

Amanda Standalone and the Pastry Shop Girls

This Saturday, March 12 at the Spirit Room, Amanda Standalone and the Pastryshop Girls will release their first album, “Millions of Blackbirds.” While it took over a year to record, Amanda, Minda and Abby have been slowly perfecting these eight songs since they first met: building them up, tearing them down, chipping off a corner here and changing a note there.