When my music plays in department stores, I quit

HearYa has a post about the Avett Brothers, noting that he heard one of their songs in a furniture store. If I am ever out, say at a Home Depot, or a Walgreens, or a JC Penny, and I hear one of my own songs, I’m pretty sure that would be the end of the […]

Art Rape -or- What money does to good musicians: Ellie Goulding

Ellie Goulding is unfuckingbelievable. Her voice is so magnetic and from what I can tell, she writes her own stuff, although once a songwriter pairs up with producers, god knows what actually happens. Regardless, this girl is for reals: Exhibit A Exhibit B She’s like a more-accessible, better-singing, more understandable Joanna Newsome. She’s even a […]

Songs that make the ladies' knees go all rubbery

This is an actual graph from Jango describing gender and age preference for my song, “Eyes and Hands” (available in the player on this page). In these graphs, pink is used to enumerate females (*rolls eyes*) and blue enumerates males: While I’m not writing songs in the interest of getting laid (“I was getting laid […]

Surprise! Green Day has fans!

Rolling Stone’s “Decade-End Reader’s Poll” has GREEN DAY as the “Top Artist of the Decade”. Stop cutting your wrists. Stop punching that baby. And the OTHER ONE. I’m mad too. But these things happen when you poll readers, whose loyalties are easily exploited for profit, particularly the younger ones. It’s not all that meaningful. I […]

Vampire Weekend Becomes Animal Collective

I always thought Vampire Weekend was overrated. I also thought Animal Collective was overrated. But then, I think everyone but me is overrated. I also thought Vampire Weekend’s popularity would quickly expire. The whole “WASP” joke was too gimmicky to last. But they’re continuing to evolve, it seems, with a new album and some fresh […]

The space between open mics and real shows

For a newish performer like myself, there exists a huge chasm between playing at open mics and playing real shows. Open mics are about getting stage time, working out kinks in your songs and your act, and for me, working through performance anxiety (and not the kind where your penis doesn’t work). But open mics […]

I don't know what Jango is but I'm on it now

Jango, from what I can tell, is a Pandora clone, but with more social networking. And unlike Pandora, you can listen to it in Canada and Europe and all those other countries that don’t rhyme with Bubited Bates of Aberbica, such as Bisrael, the Bunited Barab Bemirates, and the Bzech Bebublic. You see, the RIAA, […]

The meaning of solo

Two of the most important albums in my library are Deb Talan’s Sincerely and Mike Doughty’s Skittish. These are each albums that I was listening to obsessively in 2007-2008 right when I began to consider becoming a musician, and shortly after. No two works have had such an influence on me, and not only because […]

Aimee Allen is so full of shit

Let’s talk about Aimee Allen. I just stumbled across her and was quickly puking. She is a singer-songwriter based out of LA with a lovely voice totally lacking in sincerity, and writes…um…let’s call them “basic” lyrics. She’s known for her performance of a song called “Cooties” in the 2007 movie adaptation of the musical adaptation […]

« go back