There are only a couple of bands I’d drive a significant distance to see live, and now I’ve made the trip to NYC to see two of them. I went to see the Afghan Whigs in 2014, and this past Friday, I drove to Brooklyn for a Hold Steady show. And this time, I have… Continue reading The Hold Steady at Brooklyn Bowl 12/2/16
Category: Music
Songs vs. Performance Pieces
At dinner the other night, Kate mentioned this podcast, which excerpts a bit of a Jon Brion interview from 2006 where he makes a distinction between “songs” and “performance pieces.” As an example of the latter, he uses Led Zeppelin, saying that their recordings, as great as they are, are about those specific people in… Continue reading Songs vs. Performance Pieces
You Don’t Have to Like New Music
The tagline up at the top of this blog promises “Physics, Politics, and Pop Culture,” but unless you count my own photos as pop art, I’ve been falling down on the last of those. This is largely because, despite being on sabbatical, I’ve been so busy running after the kids that I don’t have much… Continue reading You Don’t Have to Like New Music
Most Played Songs Meme
This went around a different corner of my social-media universe while I was off in Waterloo, away from my iTunes. I was curious about it, though, so looked at the contents of the “25 Most Played” playlist, and having done that, I might as well post them here (the number in parentheses is the number… Continue reading Most Played Songs Meme
Kids Keep You Young
A week or so ago, this statistical analysis of listening trends in pop music got a bunch of play on Twitter and Facebook, but I was too busy to do anything with it. The headline result, reported with all the accuracy you should expect of such things is people stop listening to popular music at… Continue reading Kids Keep You Young
Hyperactive Dogs and Fancy Motorcycles
I’m still in the late stages of an awful cold, but shook it off a bit to write a new conversation with Emmy, the Queen of Niskayuna over at Forbes: “HEY! YOU POODLES! STAY OFFA MY LAWN!” “Emmy! Stop barking!” I sit up. She’s at the gap between the fences, where she can see into… Continue reading Hyperactive Dogs and Fancy Motorcycles
Bright Lights and Up-Tempo Tracks
The folks on the Hold Steady fan board arranged a Mix CD exchange recently, and I agreed to take part, putting together a playlist of stuff and sending off a bunch of electronic files a couple of weeks ago (I don’t know if the drive on my desktop can even burn CD’s any more, even… Continue reading Bright Lights and Up-Tempo Tracks
SteelyKid, Space-Babies, and Transformative Music
As previously mentioned, SteelyKid has started to get into pop music. In addition to the songs in that post, she’s very fond of Katy Perry’s “Roar,” like every other pre-teen girl in the country, and also this Taylor Swift song: I’ve seen a bunch of people rave about this, but honestly, I found it pretty… Continue reading SteelyKid, Space-Babies, and Transformative Music
This Is Not What I Want As a Defense of “The Humanities”
Yesterday was Founders Day at Union, celebrating the 220th anniversary of the granting of a charter for the college. The name of the event always carries a sort of British-boarding-school air for me, and never fails to earworm me with a very particular rugby song, but really it’s just one of those formal-procession-and-big-speaker events that… Continue reading This Is Not What I Want As a Defense of “The Humanities”
Ain’t No Party Like a SteelyKid Party
I’ve mentioned in a few places that SteelyKid frequently comes home from school/ camp/ day care singing garbled versions of current pop hits. So for the first time since about 1990, I added a Top 40 station to my car radio presets, so I would know what she was actually trying to sing. This leads… Continue reading Ain’t No Party Like a SteelyKid Party