I have been a science fiction nut probably since I first started to read. It didn’t help that I saw Star Wars at the tender young age of six, and it completely blew my young mind. My Dad actually took off work so we could go see it, and I remember everything about our trip […]

 » Read the rest

Ahhh, Rush. Amongst a certain demographic, the ne plus ultra of rock groups. It took me a while, but I finally got there. They’d been active pretty much all of my musically conscious life, but none of the parental generation in my family was into them, and I never listened to the radio stations that […]

 » Read the rest

As I am a male of a certain age, no series of musical memoirs should be considered complete without some mention of Led Zeppelin. Every young man needs to select a particular British supergroup to obsess about, and my choice was Led Zeppelin. The Rolling Stones annoyed me, Pink Floyd was too full of themselves, […]

 » Read the rest

It probably should be said, that in the swirling constellations of music that guided my adolescent life, none shone as brightly nor guided me as faithfully as the brilliant Triangulum of the Police, Rush, and the Cars. Perhaps an odd mix of genres, but that didn’t matter: when I wanted to chill, or jam, or […]

 » Read the rest

I first became aware of Zoë Keating by her lack of presence in Melora Creager’s thrash-cello outfit Rasputina. Don’t get me wrong: she was definitely a presence on the album Cabin Fever, which is a lovely crazy romp all over the stylistic universe, but nothing that made her stand out from the other two musicians. […]

 » Read the rest

It all begins with a bassline. In this case, it’s a solo ascending scale that drops back to E, but that’s merely part of the story. The real story is the reason that bassline is included here. In my early life I was diagnosed with many talents; as a child I would regularly draw cartoons, […]

 » Read the rest

A quick snippet: senior year in high school. A milling mass crowded into a cul-de-sac of blue steel lockers, some intent on getting their books and packs for the next class, some proceeding more leisurely. Lunchtimes were staggered in my school, with the student body split between early A Lunch and later B Lunch. There […]

 » Read the rest

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. […]

 » Read the rest

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 […]

 » Read the rest

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. […]

 » Read the rest