MUSIC is not a GENRE

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE Several years ago, I wrote and recorded a dark folk song called “You Can’t Touch Me”, in which part of the chorus states: “This face you see is not my own, this body not my real home.” Etc etc then it gets kinda depressing. The point of those two lines, though, was to illustrate the idea that a person’s real identity is not what you...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE Back a few months ago, I did a whole podcast on how music & comedy are interlinked on multiple levels. Timing. Phrasing. Using conventional forms & ideas to do unconventional things. Another dozen commonalities. But the one that applies the most this week is crossing lines – turning one thing into another – busting through a narrow i...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE We like to keep STUFF in our homes. Stuff we need and stuff we love. Some of it we’re even proud of, and want to show off. Works of art. Family heirlooms. Favorite pieces of furniture. Photos with fond memories. We display that stuff prominently in places that make sense, and give it space to be appreciated. Like the favorite art & p...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE Elephants are great. Majestic creatures. Hidden talents. Etc. Etc. They’re not my favorite animal (that would be something in the primate family), but there comes a time when they need to be paid attention to. Hence this week’s topic. I don’t see a strong reason to go over the content of this album. Almost everyone in the world above...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE Common – Gael. The White Stripes – The Hives. Beck – REC. If you’ve heard of any of these artists, chances are it’s the first of each pair. And while there are many varied reasons why that might be the case – from forces both internal & external, subjective & objective – there’s one MAIN reason that all of them share. Commerce, polit...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE Rock. Pop. Funk. Soul. Electronic. What do these words have in common? AT LEAST two things: 1. They’re all so-called “genres” of popular music; and B. They’re all included on the two albums in this podcast. Why does that matter?  Compilations like these matter more than ever. The music industry learns as it grows. It tries things, an...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE We all know what songs are made of: Music & Lyrics (or at least most have lyrics). When you see credits for a song written by more than one person, or say for a musical, they’ll always list who wrote the music (sometimes called the ‘composer’) and who wrote the lyrics. So it would stand to reason that all good songs have both good mu...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE Every artist steals. There’s a famous quote, echoed by Stravinsky, Bowie, Steve Jobs, that goes, “Good artists borrow; great artists steal.” It’s an open secret among all artists. What it’s saying is that nothing anyone creates comes out of a black hole. Some musicians sometimes wear their influences on their sleeves – like Oasis re...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE Everybody loves top lists. They’re easy to digest. They give you immediate reasons to love/hate them, agree/disagree with them. They spark all kinds of responses. We can’t help ourselves, even though we all know they’re subjective and arbitrary. Even though we all know they’re COMPLETE BULLSHIT. If you’ve been following along with my...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE Four on the floor. Boom boom boom. Nothing sounds quite like an 8-0-8. All about that bass. The vast majority of modern music is built on electronic drums. And that vast majority of THAT music is structured around a steady 4/4 beat – y’know something you can dance to. Sure, dance music has existed probably since music was first inven...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE All music is black music. What? How can that be? What does that actually MEAN? It doesn’t mean that all music has been created or performed by black artists. It doesn’t even mean that all music was invented by black artists. And in fact, I’m not even talking about ALL MUSIC EVER. But – and this is a big one – I AM talking about ALL M...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE Bing Crosby. Frank Sinatra. Elvis. The Beatles. The Cars.  Run-D.M.C. Pearl Jam. The White Stripes. Beyoncé. Billie Eilish. Riiiight? But what about… Rudy Vallee. Mel Torme. Gene Vincent. The Kinks. Squeeze. The Fat Boys. Soundgarden. The Hives. Rihanna. Grimes. Every era is defined by its most popular stars. Or is that just how we r...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE There’s a lot of music out there. The quantity & variety of music production & release correlates to two main things: A. the world population: there will always be a barely fluctuating percentage of the general population who make music; and B. the increasing ease that technology presents in sharing the music you make, and how much w...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE We become aware of things when they become an actual thing. When enough people and enough media get wind of something happening, and start to talk about it. It spreads and balloons into a stated genre, or trend, or cultural shift. It gets a label, a NAME. Like how rock n roll supposedly started in the mid-1950s. Of course, that’s all...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE The modern music world – and “world” in general – is truly amazing. We’ve got just about everything we could want at our fingertips. And so much of it is cheap or free. What we imagine, we can create. Anyone with access to a computer and the internet can think up, work up, and release into the world whatever they want. It’s not perfe...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE I don’t like not knowing things. Which of course means I’m in a constant state of inadequacy. The more I learn, the more I realize I know WAY less than I think I do, than I want to, or than I ever will. Still I take comfort in chipping away at that Olympus Mons of mystery, shining my pinlight into the Mariana Trench of missing things...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE I’m going to tell you why recorded music is WAY MORE OFTEN as close as humans have come to music perfection. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately because of our current social condition. We can’t do in-person live, but we can very much do real-time live online, which has been awesome. As of this podcast, I’ve done nearly 50 onl...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE Let’s face it: we forget WAY more than we remember, both as individuals and as a society. That’s no big revelation. But I’ll go even further and say we MISremember far more than we recall accurately. We are all our own little life chroniclers, each with a unique story of the world. And unless some awesome sci-fi imaginings (such as T...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE How do you find THE thing? You have to go back to the WHY. Why am I doing any of this? What do I hope to get out of it? What do I hope to GIVE? Answer these and any other core questions, and that thing that fits all the answers is the one that will stick. THIS IS MY WHY: To share my music. To sell my music. To spread my music everywh...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE I love solving a mystery. These two 12” vinyls have been sitting in my collection for over 30 years, completely ignored. I assumed they were one-offs from local DJs looking to make a buck, that my DJ partner & I found at one of the many stores that catered to this stuff on Chestnut St. in Philly. NOPE. Well, yes, but NOPE. These albu...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE Ahh 1980s production values. It all started out so well. Crisp, clean, tight, bouncy but slightly dark, and with awesome amalgams of styles and sounds. But after 1982-3 or so, we all know how out of control it got. The big, crashing snare. The overlayered instruments. The cheesy keyboard sounds. The MELODRAMA. It’s a perfect example...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE This week is a mega mix of five FORCE-ful artists and eight LPs (and even more on the Spotify playlist – see below), so let’s get to it. Pop electro-funk was HUGE in the 1980s, a real force (expect to see this word often) in the music world. And as far as I’m concerned it all started with Soulsonic Force, led by THEE HIP-HOP LEGEND,...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE A few episodes ago, I talked about the musical coming of age – i.e. that point in your life when you start to consciously decide what music is “yours”, not your parents’ or siblings’ or peers’ or whatever the culture tells you it should be. Though I do think it happens to almost 100% of everyone, it’s not a rule. But if it were, like...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE I grew up with rap. Right alongside of it. Okay, so when I was really young it was in proto form (Gil Scott-Heron, etc.), but as soon as I hit my pre-preteens, it took hold of me and never let go. “Apache (Jump On It)” started it. “Planet Rock”, Kurtis Blow, & “Jam On It” continued it. And then Run-D.M.C. and The Beastie Boys cemente...

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON WATCH MUSIC is not a GENRE VIDEOS and MORE Instrumentals, especially dance instrumentals, can be super boring. Most of them exist solely to keep the beat & mood going in a club or mix. Comfort food for ravers. With that in mind, and with the strict rules put on songs like this (long intros, BPM within a very small range, breakdowns and buildups coming as expected), not a lot...