Every year, the National Association of Music Merchants holds its trade show at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. It features an entire hall dedicated to drum and percussion gear, all being played at once. The experience is something like being inside an arrhythmic jackhammer, if each component of said jackhammer hopes to score a record deal by impressing… Read more →
Art resides in the quality of doing. Process is not magic.
Charles Eames, 100 Quotes By Charles Eames
“All people are musicians” Wit countered. “The question is whether or not they share their songs.”
Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance
As usual, Randall Munroe is right. The idea also applies to music. Just because you don’t get Derek Bailey doesn’t mean you should mock his music and listening to Coltrane doesn’t mean you can be a dismissive jerk to fans of Taylor Swift.
This year I resolve to mind my manners and not mock the Super Bowl. Not even the halftime show.
Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue.
Asteroid Blues: The Lasting Legacy of Cowboy Bebop
First-time solo director Watanabe had created a gorgeous tale of morality, romance, and violence–a dark look at the lives of outlaws that’s shot like an independent film. It was unlike anything the genre had seen before. It even approached its music differently. The show kicked off with a wormhole of a theme song, and the soundtrack moves so seamlessly through genres, from rock to country to pop to jazz to funk, it’s shocking to learn that one set of musicians is behind it all.
Alex Suskin’s piece is dead-on, although the soundtrack’s diversity and quality is not so shocking when you realize it’s Yoko Kanno composing and that “one set of musicians” includes members of Tipographica and Sex Mob along with some of New York’s heaviest hitters like Bobby Previte and Chris Potter.
