Threaded: When Music and Movies Intertwine

The clip at the top is from the classic movie The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). It is one of my favorite films, and I believe, a fine example of when music and the motion of a movie have been “threaded” together. In fact, this scene is one of my favorite scenes in any movie because the music and motion are so clearly intertwined. Every detail between the music and the motion of the camera has been thought through. The way the bus stops...

Father John Misty is the James Joyce of Music

Why do we hold onto nursery rhymes? Why do we remember the fables of our childhood, or absorb the parables of old, or embrace the old wives tales that we somehow take at face value? I believe we embrace them because they are ultimately understood in the simplest of ways , as the core of the story relates to being a human, or in other words, the way the story always dissolves into pure humanity.  We disguise our greatest lessons in parable and allegory, yet we...

Memory Crusades: Is This It? The Strokes

  Sometimes our memories pick odd items to hold onto. A seemingly innocuous moment from our life is given over to the past, and is somehow framed with far greater importance than we believe it deserves. Nevertheless, it takes hold in our mind, shapes itself into a memory worth cherishing and brings forth either a warm nostalgia or a wistful melancholy. There is certain music that takes me back to a definable moment when I could remember the vivid details surrounding...

Memory Crusades: A Periodic Post

Do you remember the smell of your first girlfriend’s perfume? I still remember that perfume. It was distinctive, it smelled both fruity and brimming with youth. It was junior high. I actually smelled that exact perfume just the other day when I was walking down the street. It was unmistakable. It hit me like a ton of bricks, and all the feelings from that first relationship came sweeping forward in waves. I was instantly transported back to that school corridor, walking...

The Fantasy of a Man’s Reality: Sugar Man Sixto Rodriguez

You just can’t write a story like this. It seems the charming unpredictability of real life is forced to make some of our greatest stories, and provide us with our greatest sources of inspiration. Take the true story of Sixto Rodriguez, a.k.a. Sugar Man, which was captured in the fantastic 2012 documentary Searching for Sugar Man. The documentary won an Oscar for Best Documentary at the 2013 Academy Awards. After watching and becoming mesmerized by the uncanniness of the story, it became obvious...

Supernova Thundercat Lives in Memoriam

POSTER UNVEILED!!! My very thoughtful and talented friend John Wolf sent me this awesome poster he created to commemorate my thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail in 2015. The graphical simplicity belies the fact that the composition is nearly flawless. Supernova Thundercat was my “trail name”. Everyone that hikes the trail is given one, as common names are near sacrilege within the A.T. culture. So naturally John took the Thundercat logo (the musical artist Thundercat is one of my favorite musicians,...

Hypercritical or Hypocrite- Kendrick Blurs the Line

To Pimp A Butterfly (2015) was a seminal recording. It ventured farther from the gangster and street survival tropes of Good Kid, Maad City (2012) both with it’s lyrics, themes, and sonic backdrop. There was jazz, soul, funk, and even a bit section of freeform beatnik poetry in the interlude “For Free?”. The album showed confidence in making an unconventional album with less popular appeal than previous albums. This was due in large part to the aforementioned departure from themes like...