weekly columns

Alright, I know this seems like a cop out. You may already be asking yourself, “Wait, didn’t this band break up in 2006?”. The answer to that question, my friends, would be yes, they did.  These musicians created songs of simple beauty that are often overlooked due to the later successes of each individual artist. This is why I am taking the time to give public appreciation to an unsigned band of the past, a ghost in our musical memories that deserves more than a lingering itch of what could have been.  Read More »

It all started in my garage. I was rummaging around old furniture and storage boxes when I stumbled upon a box containing my mom’s old Denon turntable and a few 33 LP records. That’s how I discovered my first favorite jazz album: Oscar Peterson Plays the Cole Porter Songbook. Read More »

For this week’s post, I am expecting many people to disagree with my choice. I encounter the same problem when I tell people that I listen to Panic(!) at the Disco or Fall Out Boy; there seems to be an assumption that if a band has written some catchy songs or is enjoyed by a massive amount of people that somehow there is no need to listen to their music because it will be terrible. I sincerely hope that changes. Read More »

So the previous week I decided to spend my time convincing you to stop what you were doing, sit down, and enjoy a nice relaxing night of (mostly) gentle music to pull at your heartstrings. This week is a little different. Honestly the best thing you could do with this week’s album is put it in your car, turn the engine on, and speed off (and by “speed” I mean the speed limit, of course) into the sunset blasting the music. With Love and Squalor by We Are Scientists is what happens when you take the heavy production out alternative music; there are only three guys in the band, so you hear three instruments. The guitar is not overdubbed into fifteen parts, the bass is not thrown into the background, existing simply because it is assumed that there should be a bassist in a rock band, and the hi-hat is the only thing panned hard left, so you don’t have to listen past production value to hear what the drummer is playing. What is the result? An album that is as enjoyable to listen to quietly with headphones as blasted through 15 inch speakers. Read More »

“A man broke his jaw trying to say what I / say on the microphone, you shoulda left it alone / just for the record, let it be known / that my ego’s only partially grown / and never will I ever condone / biting, in any form”

-Masta Ace, “The Symphony,” 1988.

 Nothing can inspire indignant hip-hop purists and classicists quite like Justin Bieber’s flirtations with rap music. When Raekwon featured on the 2010 remix of Bieber’s hit “Runaway Love,” many “real hip-hop heads” were up in arms, disturbed by how their favorite gritty street rapper would sell his soul to the marshmallow-soft teen pop star. Read More »

“If the Quest don’t look good, then Queens won’t look good
But since the sounds are universal, New York won’t look good”

-Phife Dog, A Tribe Called Quest, “God Lives Through,” Midnight Marauders, 1993.

Welcome. In this, the first Boom Bap Backstory, all the readers out there deserve an explanation. Some of you out there might be asking, “what is boom bap, and what’s its backstory?”

Boom bap is one of the sounds of hip-hop: steady, pounding, swinging drums. Any hip-hop song from New York from 1989-2000 that you’d call an anthem is most likely boom bap.

The term boom bap also has a connotation of classic-ness. And therein lies the aim of this column. I take the hip-hop of today, and add in the “Boom Bap Backkstory” to it. I want to show the roots and long-term trends that have led to what’s present within the music today. The point is to tie everything together, and make hip-hop of different eras and styles more accessible. Read More »

In 1974, David Bowie asserted, “Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars…quite as good as Jagger…he staged a country.” With this statement, Bowie commented on how similar the showmanship of fascist leaders and rock stars could be. Many other artists made a similar commentary, often joined by criticism from a more detached perspective, an unfortunately large body of pro-fascist songs, and many songs viewing other trends through the lens of fascism. Read More »

This is a companion piece to the Wed. April 13th episode of Footnotes that streams on WGTB from 9-10pm.

In the last 50 years, the United States’ per capita real GDP has increased almost threefold. The largest factor contributing to this growth has been innovation – new technologies like cell phones and the internet, which have increased output and standards of living by essentially all quantifiable measures. Why then are there so many artistic efforts to depict modernity as a weight on humanity’s back? Read More »