Month: December 2018
A truly singular genius, David Byrne has followed his personal aesthetic for forty years and we are all the better for it. I found this press release to be so David Byrne that I present it to you uncut: David Byrne’s American Utopia album, released earlier this year on Todomundo / Nonesuch Records, has been nominated for Best …
It’s better than Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison.
Growing up on a small island outside Stockholm, singer-songwriter Marlene Oak turned to music as her escape. After spending her teenage years busking on the streets of the Swedish capital’s Old Town, she first got discovered by someone who simply happened to pass by. After releasing a couple of songs, she has gone all in …
The Buzzcocks’ Pete Shelley, dead at 63. While I appreciated the Buzzcocks’s brief initial splash — and often mention that bands who wouldn’t be bands without The Buzzcocks are now getting into the Hall of Fame — I enjoyed Pete Shelley’s and Howard Devoto’s solo/post Buzzcocks careers much more. With amazingly crafted albums that boasted …
This is so beautiful it hurts. This is live Chicago blues. I’m thirty years past Chicago and I’d swear I rode the Englewoood-Howard B Train tonight, shared a bottle of Christian Brothers on the down low and got clotheslined by “the Hawk” wind when I transferred for the Ravenswood line. Heaven on a bone, Smiffy’s …
“So Excited,” the latest blast of emotional energy from Brooklyn indie artist Foxanne, is the bold, upbeat antithesis to “cool kid” apathy. The song is an unapologetic ode to being shamelessly yourself. Foxanne, a songstress and science writer belts out, “I just want to be embarrassingly honest to me.” For this song, she was inspired …
Infectious and uplifting, Tina’s newest single is all about loving yourself when you’re at your loneliest. Quite often, we’ve set upon a path of success that leads us down a path that only we can travel. This is especially true when pursuing the art of music and pushing onwards to the success as a recording …
Before I am 50, I want to have an orchestra perform a symphony I wrote. The melodies and themes, and chord structures will be a breeze. I can lay that out now. But to arrange the music with the brushes available to Beethoven, that’s the hard part. I am really good at the skeleton of …
“Why didn’t they leave us to wander through buttercup summers?” – Van Morrison, “The Master’s Eyes” For me, this is Van Morrison’s most most memdorable lyric, by far. Please engrave it on my my tombstone. Don’t worry, I’m not ill. You’ve got many years to plan for this.
Some of my conservative friends got mad at me for even analyzing ‘Baby it’s Cold Outside’ after they made a political post comparing it to the pass so called Liberals give rap. Especially the rap we grew up with. It was actually a really good discussion topic. But of course when I simply analyzed the …
Congratulations to Marco Collins. He’s going back on the air. I grew up listening to Marco on The End. He is featured in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for his roll in making Seattle very very very very famous for becoming the final frontier of this Revolution we still love, called Rock & Roll. …
I want to better understand where free speech begins, ends, lives, and ultimately dies. There are billions of people on this website, and some people go to jail and get shot on bridges for what you and I have said on here without giving this a second thought. Yet if our political climate shifts, or …
My wife Joyce and I are personally saddened by the passing of one of the most honorable and decent men our country ever had serve as its President. I had the honor of performing at his 1989 Inaugural concert Joyce co-produced ‘The Celebration for Young Americans’, his and Barbara’s 50th wedding anniversary celebration, where The …