Writing
Essays, Reviews, Musings, & Other Thoughts
An Homage To The Pop Instrumental
The first few years of the 1960s are generally considered sort of a dead zone for popular music. The first wave of rock and roll seemed a spent force; Elvis was in Hollywood, Chuck Berry was in prison, Little Richard was in church, and Buddy Holly was dead. Meanwhile, the next wave was still aborning;…
Read MoreHow I Became A New Age Artist
One of the ironies of being a creative in any medium is that sometimes what you perceive to be your lamest work becomes inexplicably popular. Of my Top 10 tracks on Spotify, nearly half are things that make me wince a little. In 2006 I answered an ad on Craigslist to do audio for an alleged film,…
Read MoreFolk Music, Rock & Roll, And The Continuum Of Culture
In 1954, a classic American eccentric by the name of Harry Smith gathered up a bunch of pre-war 78s of (mostly) rural singers, and compiled them in a series of LPs under the title Anthology of American Folk Music. These recordings subsequently became the Ur-text for the folk revival in the 1950s, which Martin Mull…
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