Category Archives: music

music: Tuesday Heartbreak attempts

One of the pure joys of going through Stevie Wonder’s incredible 6 album run was rediscovering the perfect rainy-day funk of “Tuesday Breakup.” I was in a store and heard the song, but wait! it’s Macy Gray. It turns out … Continue reading

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music: Havona is a penthouse on the Mount Olympus of bass

Dirty Loops’ Henrik Linder (best Justin Bieber cover evar!), Vulfpeck’s Joe Dart, and YouTuber Charles Berthoud are all bass monsters in a golden age of musicianship. But “Havona” by Weather Report is a different level. In my memory Jaco Pastorius … Continue reading

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AIs making images of music!?!! 🤯

Hi music fans. OpenAI’s Jukebox was generating music waveforms from scratch way back in 2020 (as I wrote). Since then, silence from OpenAI. I suspect half the music in Spotify’s “contemplative acoustic music for yoga/Pilates” and “mid-tempo EDM for hip … Continue reading

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music: a chorus of Blackbirds

Did Paul McCartney know he wrote the greatest jazz standard since the golden age of the American songbook? The supremely confident moving bass line, the single note “Blackbird singing in the”, the early “dead of” leap in the melody, the … Continue reading

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music: so much great instrumental guitar

All the tired old people complaining about “the music today” just aren’t trying. With nearly all recorded music a click away, today’s musicians are building on the best in every genre. My journey through modern instrumental guitar from Vulfpeck to … Continue reading

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music: tracing samples and beats

I knew the Beastie Boy’s Paul’s Boutique is the apotheosis of sampling; now https://www.whosampled.com/Beastie-Boys/B-Boy-Bouillabaisse/samples/ lays out all 26 samples. You can also explore J Dilla’s dense samples on the site. It still feels strange to me that artists hear a … Continue reading

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music: a return for Spinal Tap!

zOMG there will be a sequel to This is Spinal Tap. After 38 years, it can only be even sadder than the band’s first tour film; the original was another product of 1984, the high point of Western civilization. This … Continue reading

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music: the B-52’s loss

I forgot how great the B-52’s briefly were and what an excellent album Cosmic Thing is. Beyond the smash “Love Shack” (produced by Don Was) with Cindy Wilson’s immortal “Tin roof, rusted!” are several more great songs, including the eco-optimistic … Continue reading

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art: artists respecting artists

Here’s the cover of Paul McCartney’s 2013 album New: I saw it and immediately knew the cover’s designers were riffing on Dan Flavin‘s neon fluorescent tube sculptures. Dan Flavin was “an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and … Continue reading

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music: this Bach guy is seriously good

In his solid interview with Sting and his long-time guitarist Dominic Cooper, Rick Beato asked “If you were able to meet one musician, go back in time and hear one musician play…” and both immediately answered Bach. So I checked … Continue reading

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