Just when I think there are no new ways left for me to injure myself, I’m currently recovering from my first ‘guitar shock’. I’ve had plenty o’ mic shocks before, but this is the first time I’ve gotten 110vac on the control plate of a Telecaster. I moved my pinky over to the knob to do a ‘pinky swell’ and POW! There goes a fingernail. Ruined the paint job on the guitar.

Worst of all, it didn’t even look cool. Just looked like a middle-aged man having some vague sort of mental breakdown—screaming for no apparent reason.

In case you were wondering… I lived. 😀

I was going to carry on about the end of ‘tradition’ in music when this story fell out of the sky like the sixteen tone weight in a Monty Python episode: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/24/144193341/taking-classical-off-the-pedestal-into-black-communities

Upon hearing this wonderfully inspiring and uplifting story about a guy worthy of much praise, a guy who is making a real commitment to bring culture to the disadvantaged black youth of my inner […]

I recently read an article in Rolling Stone (amazing they’re still in business) about the currently popular group ‘Foster The People’. And the leader, Marc Foster, said something like this:

I don’t want to be one of those one-hit wonders like James Taylor… you know… doing ‘Fire And Rain’ for the next 30 years. I want to do thirty more great songs like [insert number one song title I should know here]

In this Great Age of Narcissism (The Big G), I guess I shouldn’t be, but when I read this, I was quite gobsmacked. I think my amazement and umbrage is because for all the RS pretensions of ‘journalism’, the interviewer just let the guy get away with it; not challenging any of his deep pronouncements. But in the GAN, hyperbole like this goes as unnoticed as smog in the city. You don’t really see it until you get outta town.

I mean, this guy should be so lucky as to have a fraction of the career James Taylor has had. He’s […]