You Do You(Or Whatever)

It’s Thursday night and I’m enjoying a couple pints and listening to Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. It’s a brand new piece of vinyl that I procured just this afternoon. First Flight To Tokyo : The Lost 1961 Recordings to be precise. It’s stunning. I never really got into Art Blakey and the Jazz […]

Ready Lets Go : Board Of Canada’s ‘Geogaddi’ 20 years Later

As much as I’d like to say the Beatles or the Stones or Radiohead or Wilco were the most pivotal musical moment for me, I think the truth is that hearing Boards of Canada for the first time might be even more pivotal. There was something about hitting play on a Boards of Canada album […]

This Is Where We Used To Go

Growing up in a small town in the Midwest the options for shopping were limited to ordering from JC Penney’s and picking it up at the sad little storefront where your goods were shipped to. You’d walk into something that kind of looked like a Little Caesars, but without the smells and stoned teenagers greeting […]

That Orange Tone

Since the spring of 1994 I’ve been a tube amp kind of guy. My first amp in December of 1987 was this little generic practice amp. My uncle gave me his old DOD Flanger Pedal and I used to get this sound I called the “psychedelic butterfly”. I’m not sure where that name came from, […]

New Year’s Day

I always remember New Year’s Day as a quiet day. It was the calm after the New Year’s Eve drinking and laughs. As a kid New Year’s Day was spent with the curtains closed in the living room while my mom watched TV on the couch lying down, while my dad stayed in the bedroom […]

Christmas Blues : Clapton, Beck, Page, Dad & Me

It was the Christmas of 1988. I was a budding guitarist who had just received his first electric guitar, a 1986 Fender Squier Stratocaster, for his 14th birthday a mere three weeks before. Prior to that, the last two years were spent toiling on a generic dreadnought acoustic with the kind of action that’s meant […]

The Alien Overlords And Me : Ten Years With Complex Distractions(Formerly jhubner73.com)

Ten years ago today I dropped my first blog post. It was a review for St. Vincent’s Strange Mercy. It wasn’t that good, but that was okay. It was okay because I had released something into the void for lost souls(and even not-so lost souls) to read. Read, judge, agree with, disagree with, stare at […]

Birthday Boi

Today I turn 48 years old. Two years away from 50. Getting older has never really bothered me. I’ve always felt like an old person in a young person’s body anyways. Not in a Freaky Friday, Vice Versa, Like Father Like Son sort of way, but more in the Benjamin Buttons sort of way. But […]

ThanksGiving, 2021 Edition

It’s been kind of a rough few days, honestly. Started feeling lousy last Wednesday and it’s been an on again, off again party of feeling good and feeling like crap. Puts me in mind of a year ago when we were locked in with Covid over Thanksgiving. Though in a really strange way there was […]

Coming to terms, records, guitars…

It’s been close to a month since we found out they were closing the plant I’ve been working in for over two decades. There’s been plenty of second-guessing, mild panic, quiet moments of reflection, and craft beer or two drank. Despite the anxiety of the great unknown, I’ve pretty much come to terms with the […]