Long before I knew who Duke Ellington was, I adored a Grateful Dead song vaguely named after one of his early hits. I was most attached to the Brent-era version on Without A Net: This is not the Dead at their absolute best. Jerry sounds like he’s about 95 years old, and some of those …
Category Archives: Autobio
I built a track out of Grateful Dead jamming
The Dead recorded a bunch of rehearsals and jams while making Blues For Allah. John Hilgarth helpfully compiled and annotated them. A Reddit commenter pointed me to “Descent Into A Spacy Place”, which is farther out harmonically than the Dead usually get. I heard a lot of interesting ideas there, and I wanted to see …
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MusicRadar column on three songs from Brat by Charli XCX
I have now written three MusicRadar columns in a row on current pop smashes by women. This wasn’t planned; it’s just the way the songs of the summer have played out. I didn’t know much about Charli XCX before I wrote this, beyond the fact that she sang some hooks on some radio hits. I’m …
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New book chapter with Toni Blackman
Publication alert! I co-wrote a book chapter about hip-hop in the music classroom with Toni Blackman, one of my major music education heroes and the central figure in my doctoral dissertation. It’s called “Building Hip-Hop Music Educators: Personal Reflections on Rap Songwriting in the Classroom.” It’s part of a new edited volume about hip-hop education that is …
New MusicRadar column about Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!”
This one was assigned by my editor, and I went into the song more or less cold. I ended up liking the song, though maybe that’s because so many of my students adore Chappell Roan and I was inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. Or maybe she’s just good! Anyway, as the …
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Russian Lullaby
When I was in college, I liked to dip into the dollar bin at the record store. That’s where I picked up Jerry Garcia’s second solo album. It was forgettable, even for an obsessive fan like me. Forgettable, that is, except for one song: I had never heard of Django Reinhardt at that point, and …
The F-Flat Annual Back-to-School Symposium
Music ed folks! If you need some PD credit this summer, check out the online Annual Back-to-School Symposium presented by the good people at F-Flat Books. Heather Fortune and I are doing a session on groove and improvisation in ensemble classes. The lineup includes some of the people I admire most in the field: Brandi …
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The Beatles multitracks
As of this writing, you can download a big collection of isolated Beatles multitracks from the Internet Archive. These multitracks have been in circulation for a while, but due to their complete illegality, they can be difficult to find. The Internet Archive is a stable download source, but we’ll see how long it takes for …
MusicRadar column on “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin'” and “Soul Makossa”
This month in MusicRadar, I explain my favorite Michael Jackson song and my favorite song of the 1980s generally, enjoy.
New monthly column for MusicRadar
My newest side hustle is a writing gig for MusicRadar, in which I will be analyzing well-known songs in terms of music theory, production and larger cultural context. The first one went live today, a study of “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish from the Barbie movie. The next one is going to …