Fugue In Space

I’ve never said I was a “cool dude”, or “hip” or “with it”. I’ve never been a trendsetter or even a trend follower for that matter(I don’t think acid washed jeans or Alf count.) If I’ve ever been a fan of the cool it’s completely by coincidence. I’ve always cringed at the modern hype machine. […]

Fine Art

So I took my son to the school art show today. Kids from all the local elementary schools had pieces put in by the art teachers. Or maybe it’s just one teacher for all the schools. I’m not sure. I know that according to popular belief and local school administration that sports is much more […]

The Fog Approaches

I woke up this morning to a thick, heavy fog covering the neighborhood. It was so thick I could barely make out the house across the street. The streetlights made merely soupy, vague circles in the early morning air. Before I left the house I brought my wife her cellphone, just in case she got […]

Everything You Do Is A Balloon

Sometimes, when I’m feeling a little run down, pushed around, and generally beaten up by life I turn to Boards of Canada for a little pick me up. I haven’t quite put my finger on what it is about these Scottish brothers’ brand of electronic music that connects with me, and to be honest I […]

The Shrapnel Years…or, Where My Lunch Money Went In Middle School

Between 1986 when I discovered Yngwie Malmsteen and 1990 when I discovered Alex Lifeson I was a fledgling guitar student learning basic chords and scales. Given that it was the mid to late 80s and I was only 13 I didn’t have guys like Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, Jeff Beck, and Jimi Hendrix to find […]

One More F*****g Synthesizer Album

As if I didn’t have enough of these dated sounding synthesizer-heavy records, I had to go out buy one more. You know, I think if you threw these on the record player and played them for me blindfolded I wouldn’t be able to tell any of them apart. Why? Because once you’ve heard one antiquated […]

Mix Tape Masterpiece

I recently acquired my parents old Sanyo dual cassette deck for the purpose of listening to some Debt of Nature cassettes that I happily received in the mail a couple of months ago. Since they hit the mail box I have listened to a couple in the family van as that 2004 relic still has […]

The West Coast Groove

There’s a handful of albums I can put on when I’m feeling like a burning pile of garbage that will instantly make me feel better. Whatever psychological purgatory I may be in will subside for the moment and I’ll feel a little more human. Boards Of Canada’s Geogaddi is one of them. The Beatles Revolver […]

Beautiful Noise

I think one of my absolute favorite musical discoveries of the last few years is the band Medicine. There’s something about the way they made pop songs into something righteously loud, discordant, and abrasive but never lost that magic ingredient: melody. Their first two albums, Shot Forth Self Living and The Buried Life, were both […]

Smut!

Imagine walking for days in the hot West Texas desert with nothing more than the shredded, soiled clothes on your back and a canteen with more sand grit in it than the H2O you started out with. Just as you think the vultures that have been stalking you for the past 12 hours will surely […]