Tuesday, September 27, 2011
The internet has spoken! These are the tracks of mine that you like the best, in order of listens. It comes as no surprise to me that three of them involve Michael Jackson, and two involve the Beatles. Wanna Be Startin’ Something megamix by ethanhein Bitter Sweet Symphony Megamix by ethanhein Human Nature Megamix by [...]
Thursday, August 18, 2011
The odds of your making a living performing your own material are small, vanishingly small. But there are a lot of ways to make a living in music. If you do succeed at the singer-songwriter path using the tips listed in the other answers, mazel tov. In the likelihood that the singer-songwriter-musician thing doesn’t pay [...]
December is always a complex month for half-Jewish mutts like me. When pressured to self-identify, I usually just go with “Jewish” for the sake of simplicity, but this is in spite of not having being bar mitzvahed, not knowing any Hebrew, having only the vaguest idea what all the holidays and rituals mean, and having [...]
Filed in Autobio, Music, Music Theory, Race and Identity
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Also tagged blues, dave tarras, history, judaica, klezmatics, klezmer, microtones, naftule brandwein, nyc, scales
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All the musicians I trust for recommendations in real life and on the web agree: the hottest artist in the universe right now is Janelle Monáe.
For my 35th birthday, my sister gave me a CD of Muppet Silly Songs, a favorite of ours when we were kids. It’s been out of print for years and last time I checked wasn’t even available on the web, legally or not. We unearthed the vinyl at our mom and stepfather’s place when we [...]
Friday, December 11, 2009
Christmas makes me depressed. I would like it not to make me depressed. I want to have kids, and I want them to at least have the option to enjoy this time of year. In order for that to happen, I need to learn to enjoy it. I remember enjoying it when I was little. [...]
Filed in Autobio, Music
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Also tagged america, christmas, dickens, drumming, duke ellington, eighties, elvis presley, Emotion, family, ibm, nostalgia, santa, tv
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Spoiler alert: don’t read until you’ve watched to the end of season three. Mad Men is well-made television, but so is plenty of other television. Why is this particular show so compelling to me and so many of my buddies? I think it’s that watching Mad Men is like watching a documentary about our parents [...]
Kramer is the name my mom’s father’s parents gave at Ellis Island because they thought it they might have an easier time with it assimilation-wise than Garfinkel. In Eastern Europe, if you want a WASP-y sounding name, you usually choose something German rather than British. My mom’s wing of her extended family calls itself the [...]
Filed in Autobio, Emotion
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Also tagged america, anxiety, buddhism, confidence, family, fashion, george costanza, judaica, kramer, monkeysphere, nyc, obama, seinfeld, synths, tv
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Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Working on Janet Jackson songs made me want to see if she did any tracks with Michael. Here’s what the internet has to say: Michael sings backup vocals on Janet’s early album Dream Street. Janet sings backup on Michael’s “PYT.” She’s in the part towards the end where he says “Pretty young things, repeat after [...]
Filed in Autobio, Music
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Also tagged creativity, guitar, harmony, hip-hop, janet jackson, michael jackson, molly, Music, Music Theory, psychology, singing, teaching, vest pocket psalm
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Saturday, August 15, 2009
My parents and stepparents loved music when I was growing up, more as spectators than participants.