Songs vs. Performance Pieces

At dinner the other night, Kate mentioned this podcast, which excerpts a bit of a Jon Brion interview from 2006 where he makes a distinction between “songs” and “performance pieces.” As an example of the latter, he uses Led Zeppelin, saying that their recordings, as great as they are, are about those specific people in […]

Most Played Songs Meme

This went around a different corner of my social-media universe while I was off in Waterloo, away from my iTunes. I was curious about it, though, so looked at the contents of the “25 Most Played” playlist, and having done that, I might as well post them here (the number in parentheses is the number […]

Hyperactive Dogs and Fancy Motorcycles

I’m still in the late stages of an awful cold, but shook it off a bit to write a new conversation with Emmy, the Queen of Niskayuna over at Forbes: “HEY! YOU POODLES! STAY OFFA MY LAWN!” “Emmy! Stop barking!” I sit up. She’s at the gap between the fences, where she can see into […]

SteelyKid, Space-Babies, and Transformative Music

As previously mentioned, SteelyKid has started to get into pop music. In addition to the songs in that post, she’s very fond of Katy Perry’s “Roar,” like every other pre-teen girl in the country, and also this Taylor Swift song: I’ve seen a bunch of people rave about this, but honestly, I found it pretty […]

This Is Not What I Want As a Defense of “The Humanities”

Yesterday was Founders Day at Union, celebrating the 220th anniversary of the granting of a charter for the college. The name of the event always carries a sort of British-boarding-school air for me, and never fails to earworm me with a very particular rugby song, but really it’s just one of those formal-procession-and-big-speaker events that […]