I’m taking a risk writing this, I suppose.  It’s not about politics, well it is, but by that I mean the politics of running a course where every student feels they have a personal stake in the content.  I occasionally encounter […]

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Scanning through the list of tracks on David Baxter’s 2009 disc, Day & Age, suggests that he was maybe not feeling so good about his love life at the time: “Maybe We’d Be Lovers”, “Do You Think of Me?”, “If […]

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Time to revisit this column, since I’m starting to find little windows of time where I can go back to my record collection and review old/lost stuff.     This album raises the perennial question of what a cover song […]

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As the end of the year approaches, people start talking about what’s going to make the best-of lists.  That chatter got me thinking about what makes my top ten every year.  It is rare that new releases constitute that list, […]

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My tap dance teacher, Dianne, is at the top of my ‘artists I most admire’ list these days. The other day in class, she was experimenting with a riff and couldn’t quite get it the way she wanted. “I wish […]

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“You’re a god!” shouted one of the more vocal audience members in the sold out Winter Garden Theatre after Matt Andersen finished a song.  Andersen laughed and responded with an offhand remark about his hair (which is fabulous) but it […]

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There was a good piece on Tuesday in the New York Times by James McKinley on the absence of protest songs in the Occupy movement.  I’d like to add a few thoughts of my own on the subject.  As an ethnomusicologist, […]

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My friend, Tim Falconer, is pretty great.  He’s a great writer, great teacher, great friend, and has, well, great taste in music.  Our first conversation nearly five years ago was about music and every conversation we’ve had since hasn’t deviated […]

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