There’s no sexy mystery to the actual process of writing songs. I read an interview where John Fogerty talked about staying up late and drinking coffee to crank out the hits that made up Creedence Clearwater Revival’s three #2 albums in 1969. In the History of the Eagles documentary, Glenn Frey talks about living in […]
Over the last few months, my buddy Brent and I have been collaborating on new music. Unlike every other project I’ve been a part of, you can’t really classify it as rock. While it contains rock instrumentation (bass, guitar, a guy yelling), the music is mostly composed on the computer using Ableton Live, which allows […]
D’Angelo’s second album Voodoo wasn’t for me…or so I thought. Look at that cover! D’Angelo, clad only in a crucifix, looks like he’s going to fuck me. I might giggle at his muscles, but he’s serious. It’s going down. No, it doesn’t matter that it’s the middle of the day, that I’ve got to go […]
We’ve had a good run of wordy, introspective, or research-intensive columns around here lately, so it’s time for a hang out column. This one’s about album mixes. Our friend Robert Keiton Smith once told me that he specifically started recording his own music so he could showcase his “big, fat bass.” As I said last […]
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, one of my favorite things about getting older is watching my friends develop and mature as artists. My Part Time Ghost singer/bassist Robert Keiton Smith released my favorite album of his back in April, TEXTURE_MISSING. And that’s saying something, because Keiton is a shooter. He takes […]
Pile destroyed a sold-out Lost Lake on Monday night. Energized by a sweaty crowd packed dick-to-ass, the four-piece tore through a decade and a half of material with the ferocity of a punk band playing a basement show. I shouldn’t have expected anything less. “They are great live,” my friend Leo Gallery of Owosso said […]
It takes a real megalomaniac to list their own record in a column that celebrates Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted, St. Vincent’s self-titled, and Sly and the Family Stone’s Greatest Hits. But I’m not here to celebrate greatness. This week’s Heck Record column about Part Time Ghost’s Songs of Death and Love is an exercise in […]
Pavement released their second album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain on Valentine’s Day of 1994. Less than two months later Kurt Cobain killed himself. I think a lot of the critical energy that would’ve gone toward the next Nirvana release landed on Pavement’s slack shoulders. At the end of the year, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain earned […]
Listen to “You’re Killing Me” off of Pavement’s 1989 debut EP Slay Tracks: 1933–1969. You wouldn’t expect this drumless, duel-guitar squall – more static than song – to be the first brick in the career of one of the most beloved bands of the 1990s. Pavement is a shoo-in for indie rock’s Mt. Rushmore. Two […]
The Band – the cocky hotshots called themselves “The Band,” although they explain it away in a Canadianly self-effacing way in the documentary – began their career first as the backing group for Ronnie Hawkins and then Bob Dylan, before becoming acclaimed headliners themselves after the release of 1968’s Music from Big Pink and ‘69’s […]