06.08.10
On rdio
“Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul.” — Plato. Music is a huge part of many people’s lives. It seems odd that music is essentially sounds and noises put together to form something that transcends its individual parts. Music, even in its simplest form is a whole, made of parts — be it notes, chords, instruments and layers — that simply are special. Let me just put music into my Magical™ column.
02.16.10
Murders&Mysteries, Now Streaming
The solo musical project that I’ve been working on — Murders&Mysteries — in fits and spurts over the last two years is going to be available for purchase really, really soon.
In the meantime, I’ve uploaded the entire album, It’s All In Our Histories, for your listening and streaming pleasure over at the website. Give it a listen.
09.30.09
You'll Taste It, In Time
If you were a grunge kid, as I was, you may have also heard the other sounds coming out of Seattle a few years later, which as some might argue, is the original emo. The band that’s most accredited to that is Sunny Day Real Estate, a band that came to prominence in 1995, on Seattle’s infamous Sub Pop label with their classic album, Diary). They’re one of my favourite bands. Seattle, could you do no wrong in the 90’s?
08.23.09
Hear the Drummer Get Wicked
This morning I remembered the dream I had last night. That isn’t unusual but it was a dream that reminded me of my teenage years — a dream I would have had as a teenager in fact. I dreamt that I was Pearl Jam’s drummer and that I also created and designed our latest album artwork and decorated and laid out our live stage show. It made me happy. It reminded me of a younger me.
04.07.09
Cross-Popllination
If you put on the excellent Feed the Animals by Girl Talk, you’re presented with a staggering musical opus of songs made up of a large range of other songs. It’s truly a remarkable feat — picking out bits and pieces of other songs and seeing how music intertwines and fits into itself in different contexts. One of the remarkable details of the album comes on the opening track, Play Your Part (Pt. I) at 3:01-3:15 seconds where for those 14 seconds, the solo cowbell notes from Rage Against the Machine’s “Freedom” are sampled. That level of detail and minutiae to pick out a small piece of music that most were unlikely to know impressed me. Feed the Animals is a great album. And yet, it’s not original but at the same time, it completely is. It’s a new context.
04.01.09
Ten
Many years ago, when I was just thirteen years of age, a friend of mine from Australia called me on the phone and we were catching up. The usual was on the table: when he was coming back to visit and what was new. He told me about a band I should listen to and whose album I should get. I had to make him repeat the band’s name a few times as I didn’t quite get it. Pearl. Jam. Pearl Jam.
02.06.09
Motorcycle Emptiness
One of the first CDs I ever bought was the debut album from the British band, Manic Street Preachers. At the time, there were a few songs I liked but essentially didn’t “get” the album until much later on, when my musical tastes matured some. To put this into context, I bought three CDs as my first very-expensive-at-the-time imports, namely the aforementioned, Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger and Snow’s 12 Inches of Snow. Yes. I bought that. And yes, I can “sing” “Informer.” It was a former party trick of mine.
