Decade Wrap-Up: Two Great Teens Rock Tunes

Mac DeMarco: "My Kind of Woman" 



Sunflower Bean: "I Was A Fool" 

Miracles: No Guitars?

For reasons I refuse to explain, my anthem song for the el bizarro summer of '19 is this, what you see pictured here: "Miracles," by Jefferson Starship. Brilliant, inventive, horny, despairing, euphoric, moody, enchanted, hypnotic; Miracles has a whole she-bang going, built into its package deal, including a sophisticated sense of structure missing in most pop music. The song flap-jacks itself in all kinds of different directions, without ever losing a sense of mood, ambiance, focus or cohesion. It also brings up something about pop music in '19; is it me, or are guitars out? Is this it; is the age of the guitar hero (or the guitar slinger) completely over? Everywhere I go, everyone's tired of guitar-based music. People want things like "Miracles," more about a gentler kind of musical intensity. Even if a bunch of other things make Miracles sui generis.

Ardent @ the Highwire...

Reviews from AntiMatters (NYC, 1999)

Going Modal

El Goodo is doing very well on House-Mixes. Brings up a key point: I don't have much musical training, but I have some. Taking lessons intermittently for a few years at Music Works (now Pro Drum Works) in Glenside, I learned the rudiments of modal guitar playing, and they stuck with me. Mixing up Dorian, Phrygian, and Ionian modal elements into my lead playing became second nature to me over the course of my adolescence; and I crafted El Goodo so that some of that feeling, that ambiance, could come through.

Sara Smile

The number which has now accrued to my cover of Hall and Oates' "Sara Smile" on Soundcloud seems large enough to me to make it equivalent to a Soundclick hit. Beyond the obvious proud Philadelphia heritage level, this cover has a story behind it: I recorded it during the fall months of 2006 at the Eris Temple in North-West Philly, with Matt Stevenson producing. The sessions were fit in to a frenzied time, while I was also starting as a "gradjunct" with the University Fellowship at Temple and writing/publishing my first books. Matt used the sessions to test a bunch of new recording techniques, as his experiments with Pro Tools continued. Of what I recorded then, "Sara Smile" turned out the best, despite the botched, verite opening; Matt and I agreed; and it reaffirmed my determination to keep making music, no matter what else I happened to be doing.

Who's the Hang Man?

A poem with an interesting musical hinge.