Tag: music
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Love & Revelation
So excited to receive Over the Rhine’s gorgeous new album Love & Revelation in the mail. I don’t get many CDs these days, so it was a treat to admire the design and new-CD smell: This album was part of Over the Rhine’s fundraiser from a few years ago my wife and I contributed to.…
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Why I love Kanopy, Hum, and System Information
Want to give some love to three services I’ve enjoyed lately: Kanopy Kanopy is a free streaming service available through your public library. (If it isn’t, ask them to get it!) Abundant with titles from A24, The Criterion Collection, and other high-quality providers, it’s rife with a delightful array of foreign films, indies, and documentaries…
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Now available: ‘The Wonder Of It All’, a new album of old demos
Surprise! I just released a new album of old demos called The Wonder Of It All, now available on SoundCloud. Since 2010, when I first got my MacBook Pro, I’ve used GarageBand to record song ideas. Some of them remain fragments and half-songs, but many have become full songs. This album is a collection of…
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Media of the moment
An ongoing series on books, movies, and music I’ve encountered recently. Truman by David McCullough. I’m not saying some parts aren’t skimmable, but I am saying this 1,000-page book (not including endnotes and index) didn’t feel that long and indeed deserves the Pulitzer Prize for Biography it received. That’s a testament to both McCullough and Truman,…
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Ram McCartney
Rob Sheffield’s Dreaming the Beatles (highly recommended) has a great Paul McCartney quote on his own solo work: I hear some of them and think, blimey, you should finish that one someday, son. I don’t think that applies to his more recent ones, which I really like: 2005’s Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, 2007’s…
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Hamilton and what makes a healthy republic
The Show Ready for a hot take? Hamilton: An American Musical was really good. I assumed I wouldn’t see it for years, as tickets are prohibitively expensive in Chicago. But it was a surprise anniversary gift from my wife (musical theater tickets are the traditional Year 3 gift, right?) along with a special ticket she…
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I’m with ‘Stupid With Love’
I have listened to the Original Broadway Cast Recording of the Mean Girls musical (on Hoopla—free with your library card) and have determined, without having seen the show, that the best song is “Stupid With Love”:
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Songs over notes: in praise of The Okee Dokee Brothers
Had the pleasure of seeing The Okee Dokee Brothers in concert at Lincoln Hall. My little niece is a superfan of the folk duo, which is how I got turned onto them. And since they are a kid-centric act, I got to experience the glories of an 11 a.m. concert start time. I’d go to…
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Music we leave behind
There are two works of art I associate with an ex. One is the music of Mayer Hawthorne, specifically A Strange Arrangement, which had come out a few months before our brief relationship and was a primary jam for me that winter. The other is the Disney animated film The Princess and the Frog, which…
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Music of the Moment – International Women’s Day edition
An ongoing series on music I’ve encountered recently. Today, in honor of International Women’s Day, here’s an all-female list of music I’ve been really enjoying. “Ain’t That Fine” by I’m With Her, See You AroundThe soulful powers of Aoife O’Donovan, Sara Watkins, and Sarah Jarosz combined have become I’m With Her (which I’ve learned pre-dated Hillary’s presidential…
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Media of the moment
An ongoing series on books, movies & more I’ve encountered recently: Nurtured By Love by Shinichi Suzuki. Great little book on how to cultivate talent, specifically in children and music but also for anyone in anything. On Trails: An Exploration by Robert Moor. Enjoyed the adventure of this winding, informative book on the nature of trails…
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School of Rock
“We’re not goofing off. We’re creating musical fusion.” The video of a guy drumming to the “Just give up” speech from School of Rock inspired me to rewatch that 2003 Richard Linklater film for the first time in a while. It’s a meaningful movie for me, coming out when I was in high school and…
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Drumming to Dewey Finn in ‘School of Rock’
File this under “things I’d never think of but now make perfect sense”: drumming synced to Dewey Finn’s “Just give up” speech in School of Rock. Incredible. He has a bunch more too, like Willy Wonka and Fawlty Towers. School of Rock was a formative movie for me. It came out when I was in…
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Sgt. Better: ‘Lonely Hearts Club Band’ remastered
By no means am I an audiophile. Play an MP3, ACC, and WAV file of the same song back to back and I most likely couldn’t tell the difference. (Correction: I definitely couldn’t tell the difference, having failed this quiz.) But when I listened to the newly remastered 50th anniversary edition of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely…
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Pinery Boys: Songs and Songcatching in the Lumberjack Era
Got Pinery Boys: Songs and Songcatching in the Lumberjack Era as an unexpected Christmas gift from my dad. Given our shared appreciation for and history in the Northwoods of Wisconsin (though not in lumberjacking or songcatching unfortunately), this was a delightful read. It’s partly a reprint of Franz Rickaby’s 1926 collection Ballads and Songs of…