This is a totally non-musical rant. I’ve never been a huge fan of Facebook. I’ve made no effort to do anything to encourage a presence and literally none of my real fans have encouraged me to push it. But Mark Zuckerberg has gotten a lot of press this week, what with the IPO and his marriage. And I finally have to come out and say it: I really have a visceral loathing for the guy. I don’t just mean ‘Facebook’ or ‘Internet Culture’ or what the guy represents. I mean the guy.

I never bought into all the Social Network caricatures. I’m sure he’s not quite as out there as all that. However, here’s what I wanna say…

Do you want this guy running the world? I mean have you really listened to him talk? It’s not just his affectations. It’s his message.

Unlike the other tech types, from Microsoft to Apple to Google, who are basically about the money, Mark really believes in changing people. He doesn’t just want to make a […]

I really love Boardwalk Empire. Aside from the obvious comparisons with Detroit, it’s got fabulous actors, costumes, sets and great period music. Totally captivating. After all the boffo recommendations, I couldn’t wait to get my first NetFlix disc. I flipped it in and within five seconds I was reaching for the remote to shut it off. This alt rock theme wailing away (which sounds a lot like ‘Season Of The Witch’) under all these surreal CGI-enhanced images from the show. WTF?

I must stop here to tell you that I am of that ilk that finds no joy in stylistic mash-ups. Remember all those movies in the 80’s where they hired Queen (or worse still, Hans Zimmer) to do a rock/sequencer score for a movie involving medieval castles? YUK!

Fortunately, if one fast forwards past the crappy theme music? The actual show score is fantastic early jazz. But I forgive ’em. I know why they did it. And it worries me.

When you hear live early jazz it sounds great. Big. Full. But […]

A short post just to say… “I’m not dead.” I’ve started about twenty fabulously expansive rants and I just run outta gas.

But it’s been too long. So…
1. We’re actually gettin’ near the end. I had all these grand pretensions of posting snippets of notation and audio and all these really cool images of Detroit in it’s hey day and man? I get exhausted even thinking about doing all that multi-media pre-marketing shit. But the music is even better than I thought. It took me a long time to really believe it… It was just so impossible when I started that I didn’t take it all that seriously in some respects.

2. I was warned not to care too much. Which I completely laughed off. What am I? Some kinda method actuh? But at some point, all melodrama aside, the nature of Detroit got to me. It is no exaggeration to say that I’ve made myself clinically depressed getting to know these people. I cannot wait to have this over. It’s all […]

We all gotta have it. As you may have noticed, I’ve been redoing the site; mainly this has been after complaints about the speed. It had gotten pretty durned pokey. And while at it, we made a couple of other changes. So…

A couple of announcements:
1. The whole Freebie download thing is much easier now. So for those of you who want something for nothing? You have to do even less of that nothing. If such a thing is even possible.

2. If you purchase individual songs directly, they are now a one-click buy if you use PayPal. No forms to fill out or goofy logins. So it’s as easy as iTunes or Amazon and you get CD audio quality instead of that compressed stuff.

3. I temporarily took down the Detroit site after some bizaare hacking. I noticed this a couple of weeks ago but… as so often happens in life… I didn’t act immediately for the simple reason I just refused to believe it was happening. I mean seriously, with all […]

The very best movie I’ve seen in a -long- while is Pina; a performance piece commemorating the life of choreographer Pina Bausch. First of all, it’s the first 3-D movie I’ve seen that was worth a shit. In fact, it just wouldn’t work well in 2-D. Director Wim Wenders cleverly exploits the formats innate tendency to render depth in discrete layers. He intentionally creates scenes that look almost like grade-school dioramas. In addition to being extremely cool looking, it also solves another problem of filming dance—what to leave in and what to leave out. How does one choose the angle you want the viewer to see? Well, with 3-D you can show it all in focus, but put the layer you want to emphasise highlighted.

And the choreography is amazing enough to warrant such imagination. It’s so good, in fact, I fear lots of people who aren’t big ‘modern dance’ fans will be so captivated by Pina that they go out and buy tickets […]