May 28 2009
Set list:
“New York City,” recorded outside John Cage’s apartment.
The Cramps - “Human Fly”
John Cage - “3 Dances for Prepared Piano (2)”
Pierre Schaeffer - “Cinq Etudes De Bruits: Etude Violette”
J.S. Bach - “Sonata 1ma in G-Moll BWV 1001: Adagio”
Roy Haynes - “Snap Crackle”
Ex-Models – “Girlfriend Is Worse”
Bolokada Conde – “Yaya”
Brian Eno – “2/2”
Art Lande – “The Baseball Trip – Game 7: Los Angeles Dodgers at Pittsburgh Pirates”
Miles Davis – “Directions”
Emani Sankara Sastry – “Pancharatna Kirtanam - Adi Tala”
John Coltrane – “Saturn”
Iannis Xenakis – “Charisma”
Fennesz – “Transit”
John Zorn Plays The Music Of Ennio Morricone – “The Sicilian Clan”
Gregory Isaacs – “You’ll Never Know”
Don Cherry – “Voice Of The Silence”
“New York City” again.
April 18 2009

Sam finally gave me a disc of a gig we did with Adam Benjamin about a year ago. We listened to it and decided that it was “killing,” to use the parlance of our times. Despite their relatively poor sound quality, I posted a few tracks in the Listen section. Pictured above is the guy inadvertently responsible for bringing the three of us together. Photo by me.
March 5 2009

Spain (one of the bands I play in) will be opening for an awesome band from the UK called Tindersticks at the Henry Fonda Theater in Los Angeles, CA on March 13th. Tickets to this very special occasion can be purchased here.
February 23 2009

Josh Haden, Joey Waronker, Merlo Podlewski
Spain’s album “The Blue Moods of Spain” was named a “Lost Classic” by Magnet. There’s a little piece about it here. Spain plays at Create Fixate on March 7th.
February 13 2009
There seem to be at least two different kinds of Radiohead fans: those who readily consider everything the band has released as the work of collective genius, and those who pretty much quit paying attention somewhere around OK Computer. It has been my observation that those who fit into the latter category are predominately male. This makes sense, because it appears to me that Radiohead’s sound and overall aesthetic pre- vs. post- OK Computer work to represent two distinct, opposing male identities. One identity is the that of the sensitive yet powerful male, more or less represented by the band’s earlier, guitar-based music, which is replete with conventionally “stable” harmonic devices (most of the songs on The Bends are representative of this). But a conflicting identity begins to crop up on OK Computer and comes to the fore on Kid A and Amnesiac, both of which showcase a predominant reliance on electronically manipulated sound and relative harmonic stasis or ambiguity (see “Idioteque” from Kid A). The confluence of these factors on Kid A and Amnesiac enable an interpretation of the music as being somewhat androgynous, where the lines between “masculine” and “feminine” musical signifiers become blurry to the point where some males feel the need to disassociate. Given that the electric guitar has historically served the male performer in molding the audience’s perceptions of his power, what happens when that instrument’s role in the music is greatly diminished? Similarly, what happens when a more or less conventional usage of harmony is replaced by a static loop of bleeps, blurps, and hums?
And as my friend Nick recently pointed out to me, what about those who didn’t really care about Radiohead until Kid A?
Seeing as how those records came out a long time ago and we’ve all had some time to sit with them, I’m sure someone’s already written at length on this topic before, I just don’t know about it. If you do, let me know.
February 3 2009

An inaugural divulgation of recent inspirational source material. Maybe this will be a semi-regular thang.
Songs:
“Law Years” - Ornette Coleman, Science Fiction
“Broken Heart” - Josh Haden, Devoted
“Strange Overtones” - David Byrne & Brian Eno, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
“Chameleon” - Herbie Hancock, Flood
“Reel Around The Fountain” - The Smiths, The Smiths
Reading:
Consider The Lobster And Other Essays, David Foster Wallace
Film:
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
January 18 2009

A partial list of my Affiliates is here.