This ain't no disco? Oh really? That Talking Heads lyric was always misquoted (as David Byrne complains in his new book) but from the look of the charts, this is, indeed, a disco. The two biggest hits of the summer (certainly my two favorites) are straight-up, unashamed, and wonderful disco songs.

Daft Punk already has my vote for album of the ( Read more... )

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I'm playing Etta James today. Not her old stuff. I'm listening to two records that might not exist at all had she not been such a tough woman. I like her 50s and 60s stuff just fine, but for me, her music reached its peak when she was hitting bottom. We lost a lot of great musicians at the end of the 1960s, and we mythologize them and listen to ( Read more... )

It doesn't matter how much music you listen to or how knowledgeable you think you are. At some point, you'll stumble across someone and wonder how you could possibly have not known about them. Better yet, you'll listen to this artist's work and say to yourself, "ooooh, so that is where (Bowie/Eno/Iggy/Nick Cave/Joy Division/etc) got it from ( Read more... )

I have a few new harmonitronica pieces online, all created with some new equipment I'm testing out. I'll write more about this separately, but I have outgrown (or rather, my music has outgrown) the basic delay pedals I've been using. They weren't flexible enough, didn't offer enough loops, or enough control over the loops, and too much of the ( Read more... )

An email correspondent asked what I meant in my previous post when I said that Discreet Music is not boring, since it's not something you could really listen to all the way through. Perhaps a better word would have been "monotonous," but I stand by my statement.

Robert Fripp characterizes Eno's definition of ambient music as "music as ignorable as ( Read more... )

Benoît Mandelbrot died on Thursday. I hadn't realized the founder of chaos theory, the man who coined the word "fractal" to describe a concept he had discovered, was still alive. Fractals haven't even been around for 30 years? But yes, that's right; his original book was published in 1982 ( Read more... )

The other night at a bluegrass jam in Red Hook, a couple of hipsters came in and started singing some old-time songs. They played loud and fast and not terribly well, and didn't leave much room for others. They played the old tune "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad" -- the one with lyrics like "I'm going where the weather suits my clothes" -- and ( Read more... )

Yes, I'm wrapping up one of the longest (and most rewarding) (and most frustrating) jobs I've ever done, and looking forward to a summer and fall of music. (And other things, as well, but more about that later.)

Remember harmonitronica? I haven't forgotten about it, and in fact, played it live for Yael Shtainer's MEta dance performance earlier ( Read more... )

Thanks to rosiebird, who wonderfully let me know that it was happening, but then sadly had to work and could not come, I saw Yoko Ono at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music last night, with mary_wroth. I don't even have words. Yoko is 76 years old -- in Catherine's usual delicate phraseology, "a little old lady." She moves haltingly and her dance moves look endearingly ( Read more... )