The Hippie Goes to the Opera (Part One)

I went to the Opera once. I don’t even remember what it was. It was shortly after I’d seen the Who in the fifth row and so I couldn’t hear too well, even though I was in the fifth row at the opera. Even though it was sung in English (a real no [...]

This is EXACTLY How I Feel

Thank you Rufus.

Conservative Christian, Right Wing Republican, Straight, White, American Male

I’m a huge fan of irreverence in any context. My guitar sensai introduced me to the music of Bobby Bare, who was way ahead of his time in terms of being irreverent, and its this irreverence that initially attracted me to Todd Snider.
Snider sings about things that I often think about, but [...]

My 10 Favorite Albums of the Last Decade

Here they are, in no particular order.

The Jane Does - You Bring the Devil
This is perhaps my most obscure pick of the decade, and my freakiest find. The Queen of My Universe was showing me the tremendous hoax of a video blog called Lonely Girl or something, and she had a Jane Does song [...]

Musical Constipation

Ever wake up in the morning when you could be sleeping in, or trying to get to sleep at night but some dumb fucking song just keeps going through your head. Usually you only know, like, a few words of it and those are the ones that keep looping over and over?
Welcome to my [...]

The Early 21st Century and the Philosophy of Loss

It’s that time of the decade when everyone seems to be doing their end of the decade thinking, and despite my resistance to doing so, I have done so. When I teach my personal recollections of the history of my lifetime I tend to look back on the 80’s as the worst of historical [...]

Here’s my Mule: Gov’t Mule at Party in the Park

I’ve had all good intentions of seeing Gov’t Mule for the past several years, but I’ve never been able to connect. This year at Party in the Park, I finally connected. Even though I got there a half hour into their set, I still got a two hour show in which the Mule [...]

My Own Facebook High School Musical

Now that Facebook has hooked me up with a lot of my high school friends I’m dusting off a lot of synapses. It’s always good to reconnect synapses, especially when they’re musical memories. Each time I see old friends, I hear the music they planted in my brain forever.
Thanks Everyone! [...]

Dolly Meets Zappa in Surround Sound

The women in my life have a big influence on what I listen to when they’re around. I have extreme tastes in music, and don’t object when the Queen of my Universe or the Cat of my Universe object to a song or two.
The disadvantage that Dolly (the Cat of my [...]

Ratdog and the Allman Brothers: My First Boring Concert

I was a latecomer to the Grateful Dead scene, and was by no means a serious Deadhead. I was into them in their final years, from 1987ish to 1995. During that time, when they were hot, they were smokin’, but there were a few shows I saw that never seemed to get off the [...]