“I drink your milkshake!”

One of the great things about having a teenager that’s into good art; be it music, films, books, etc, is that you get to go back and revisit all those great films they haven’t seen yet but you have. My son and I have been doing this for a couple years now. First it was […]

Message To Love : Hendrix and Band of Gypsys

Growing up, Jimi Hendrix was one of the big ones for me. Guitar hero, guitar God, six-string guru,..whatever you want to call him he was this super cool, super groovy alien being in colored silks and a flaming Strat making sounds on a guitar unheard of before. Of course he’d been dead over three years […]

Above & Beyond : Makaya McCraven’s ‘Highly Rare’

For it being only the second week of February I feel like there’s been an amazing amount of new music that’s hit our ears already. At least I’ve written about a lot of new music. I’m not complaining, man. January and February are typically pretty barren of new music off the bat. It’s usually March […]

Left Side, Right Side : Rush’ Masterpiece ‘Hemispheres’

It’s been one year to the day that one of the greatest drummers to beat the toms passed away from cancer. The wizard, the professor, and the all around thoughtful thinker Neil Peart moved on to the next phase of existence. For a guy that had gone through so much heartache and sickness of his […]

Revisiting The Classics : The Films of Scorsese and Coppola

There are milestones you look forward to in the lives of your children. First words, first steps, first day of school, first best friend, sleepovers, learning to drive, high school graduation, college graduation, marriage, and then becoming a parent themselves. Then there’s the milestones that parents look forward to because the parents themselves are interested […]

“Lost inside my sick head”…

Alice In Chains’ Facelift was unlike any album I’d heard when I first put it in my ears of December 1990. They were a Seattle band, but they were not like Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone, Screaming Trees, or Mudhoney. They were darker and much more metal than their Pacific Northwest peers. With Jerry Cantrell’s guitar […]

“If Words Could Speak They’d Mean Even Less”

Christmas, 1990. I was 17-years old and my Christmas list consisted of just a few very important items: Alice in Chains’ Facelift, Super Mario 3, Soundgarden’s Louder Than Live videotape, and Jellyfish’ Bellybutton. There were some socks and a bag of peanut M&Ms, as well as a bottle of Brut 33 in my stocking. Under […]

Revisited : Joe Satriani’s ‘Not Of This Earth’

As an awkward teenager I found most of my heroes in guitarists. Middle school was littered with cassettes of guys with names like Yngwie Malmsteen, Tony MacAlpine, Steve Howe, Vinnie Moore, Paul Gilbert, Jason Becker and Marty Friedman. Every time I picked up a Guitar magazine I’d flip to the back of the magazine and […]

“Stuck In Indiana With A Bug In My Banana”

I think it was 1988. Or maybe it was 1989. It was still the neon decade and I was a middle schooler on the cusp of being a high schooler. I wasn’t popular or even barely noticed in school, but I had a small crew of friends that I could relate to. My older brother […]

Where’d All The Time Go? : Revisiting Dr. Dog’s ‘Shame, Shame’

Occasionally I feel like I’m doing a pretty good job parenting. I mean, my kids have all turned out to be polite, kind, and thoughtful young adults so I know I didn’t completely screw them up. But as a parent you’re in a constant state of self-judgement and self-diagnosis, wondering if that one time when […]