One bright Christmas in the late 70s my younger uncle decided he was going to assemble for his young nephew a proper musical education. This was nothing new. He was the “cool” uncle, only sixteen years my elder, and kinda reminded me of the latter-day Beatles in the way he dressed and wore his hair. […]

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I was working in a small print shop as a prepress technician, although I was also doing design and IT work because there was no one else around to do those things. As with many small business situations, there were oddities and annoyances, especially as the basic personality traits of both The Owner and Operations […]

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One of the last CDs I bought before leaving Austin, Texas for good in 2008 was a disc by a local band, Ghostland Observatory. Ghostland Observatory is the brainchild of two guys who decided that they would forgo any notions of pandering to the popular crowd and just make music that they wanted to make. […]

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She introduced herself as my something cousin something twice something or something. She looked like Danica McKellar, but I supposed I could see some of my father’s side in her. She said she remembered my birth — “There was suddenly a baby!” she said. I was confused, as she looked younger than me, but maybe […]

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When waiting to play bass at a live venue celebrating a fireworks display, it’s good to remember that an excellent way to practice your chops is with an appropriately-sized bunch of celery.

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Upon examining our host’s turntable, I noticed that it had at least four tone arms in various degrees of deployment. A moment’s reflection made it obvious that this was to provide optimum oversampling.

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Early spring in Texas, out in the parking lot of the apartment complex I called home. Cool day, cloudy mostly with some patches of sun glinting through the branches of the trees above me. As sunset deepened, the clearing sky lit up the neighborhood with a diffuse orange glow. 99.9 F° was playing on my […]

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The excitement was palpable: my friend’s teenage brother had scored the deal of a lifetime. From the early fall heat he and his friends carried in the prize: a wood-paneled console stereo that must have been six feet long and could have held a small buffet and a sideboard of decanters on its immensity. My […]

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