United States
I'm a New York City native and a graduate of Bennington College, where I received a B.A. in creative writing. I've completed my first novel titled, SOFTCORE, which is currently being shopped by Janklow & Nesbit. I've written for Gothamist, The Brooklyner, STORGY Magazine, The Halcyone Literary Review, Baeble Music, Short and Sweet and on my own 4 a.m. Music Blog. I'm also a Bessie Award-winning composer of experimental music. I've created scores for Pam Tanowitz and other choreographers which have been performed at Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum, Central Park Summerstage, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and other venues from Brooklyn to Buenos Aires. I'm a part-time lecturer at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.
Every time a service that once required a human is replaced by machine, I have a reflexive initial resistance. I take it as a sign of decreasing civility, a lack of humanity. But then, fairly soon, I wonder why we ever interacted with people at all.
Ellen was praising her beet and pea salad and waiting for Billy to do the same. "These are the best beets," she said. "And the organic peas really make a difference." "Beet and pea salad," Billy said. He liked to say 'beet and pea salad.'
I sat down with Pam Tanowitz in my recording studio, to ask her a series of questions I have been curious about lo these many years. Some of her answers were a surprise, some I already knew, but thought her explanations would be entertaining for others to read. Pam is a deeply eccentric human being who could pass as the most normal person you know. Our creative partnership is coming up on twenty years, with the domestic one a few years behind. Her endless depths of workmaking ability are...
I came late to the rice cakes game. When folks were obsessing about David Chang's interpretation, I figured he'd jumped the shark. I mean, how could anyone-even a lauded chef like Chang-make those crunchy, inedible cardboard discs taste good? Turns out-I'm an idiot.
With her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year and new music coming out produced by Jack White, it seems that Wanda Jackson's 50 plus year career is finally gaining the validation it so richly deserves.
If you award points for originality, Ariel Pink should always be on your playlist. He manages the neat trick of sounding like no one else, while taking you on a tour of forty years of music history.
The world didn't need another Bowie album. The man proved himself decades ago with his unbroken streak of 13 brilliant albums in 11 years, from Space Oddity, (1969), through Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), (1980). It's a decade-long embarrassment of greatness unmatched by any post-Beatles/Stones-era artist. (There, I said it.)
John Grant is having a rough week. Not only is he suffering from a nasty flu and a throbbing toothache as he kicks off his first solo headlining U.S. tour, but the lover for whom he wrote painfully intimate songs like "Caramel," ended things recently by telling him "I don't know you."
Frank Ocean Channel Orange (Island Def Jam) The year 2010 was all about Kanye West's over-the-top album, My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Fantasy. Then 2011 went to Drake's minimalist epic, Take Care. But 2012 is all Frank Ocean.
Fleet Foxes concluded their two-night stand at the crazily opulent United Palace Theater with a harmony-drenched, strummy set, featuring the bulk of their new album, Helplessness Blues, but including plenty of favorites from their previous work. Opening with the new-agey instrumental, "The Cascades," the band then launched into "Grown Ocean" a standout from the new record.