By Erik

Published: October 23rd, 2006

The only way I know that the illustrator, designer and street artist Toofly’s real name is Maria Castillo is because that’s the name displayed with her e-mail address. I suppose I should be more cautious and say that I assume that it’s her real name. Frankly, I didn’t think it was important enough to ask her about. The lady is getting a lot of ink these days. Maybe we need a new term for that; let’s say she’s propagating billions of editorial pixels. That would be in addition to the untold gazillions of pixels that her art generates on computer screens around the world, those well-lit but low-resolution 2D images that, try as they might, just can’t quite do justice to ...

By Erik

Published: September 29th, 2006

Music is like nothing else so much as language. It is spoken with words (notes) both long and short, of different tone and timbre, a collection of which is called a "phrase." Even without accompanying lyrics, people innately sense that music tells a story. And so it does. One of the most difficult musical languages to understand, much less to speak, is jazz. And perhaps the most difficult dialect — the most challenging and most removed from popular conceptions of melody and harmony — is free improvisation. The late soprano saxophonist, Steve Lacy (1934-2004), was a leader in this misunderstood but important style. Lacy started his career in the early 1950s playing one of the simpler, now often hackneyed, styles of jazz, ...

By Erik

Published: August 31st, 2006

Like indigenous (folk) music and country, blues is one of those musical styles whose strength is primarily in the story being told, by both the music and lyrics, as well as the performer’s presentation. It relies on a simpler musical structure and a less expansive vocabulary of chords and voicings, than, say, jazz. And yet, jazz was born of the blues as it assimilated Afro, Cuban and European elements throughout the early 20th century.R&b, rock ‘n’ roll, soul music — these are all grateful children of the blues. Don’t overlook the musical challenge in crafting solid blues music just because the chord progressions are basic; ask the painters Miro and Chagall how easy it is to express yourself on a ...

By Erik

Published: August 29th, 2006

Krystle Warren’s Web site biography says her beginnings “trail back” to Kansas City, Missouri. But what’s more important in that real-life short story is the bit about her “buying her first guitar at fifteen,” after which she “immersed herself into the song book of Lennon/McCartney.”I always listen to someone’s music before reading anything that they or anyone else have to say about it, and I mean really listen; no TV in the background, no reading while I listen, no distractions. And the word that popped into my head within the first 20 seconds of “I’ve Seen Days,” one of her three MySpace tracks, was “Beatles.” (The tracks at MySpace are all from Krystle Warren and the Faculty’s EP, “Diary,” while ...

By Erik

Published: August 11th, 2006

Good thing My Quinn, Pat Finnerty, John Parise and Brian Craig of the band Okay Paddy are in Pennsylvania, since in California an Italian police captain couldn’t even refer to himself as “Top Wop” on a custom license plate. Apparently, back East a proud Irish lad can call himself a Paddy and it’s no biggie. Cool! Unless, of course, I have the name thing all wrong.I forgot to ask. But I did ask Quinn (and it’s Mike, actually) where home was, and he said “in Philadelphia most of the time, while the rest of the boys are in Scranton,” but added that the group “conduct[s] operations in both lovely towns.” And those operations include some pretty tricky ones, like writing the ...

By Erik

Published: July 27th, 2006

Ryan McNeely’s MySpace page is entitled “Ryan McNeely Eats Animals,” but the links from there to his LastFM radio page and other sites eschew the carnivorous imagery in favor of just the name that I assume his parents gave him. It is more accurate to call what McNeely does “sound design” than composition. On his first track at MySpace, “The Cloud Song,” we get the sonically-wrangled talking voice overdubs while synthetic drums churn underneath some simple but oddly effective electric piano noodling. It builds up nicely without really going anywhere, and allows you to be and do and think as it provides a subtle, cerebral soundtrack. That is the very definition of good sound design. You can’t dance to it, but when ...

By Erik

Published: July 8th, 2006

Fred Allen, one of the wittiest of all ‘40s radio comics, lamented that TV, which ended his career, was “chewing gum for the eyes.” Today’s more adventurous music lovers, sifting through Clear Channel chaff and Top 40 filler, can identify with Allen’s complaint. So much “music” is just “chewing gum for the ears.” Wasn’t the Internet supposed to help with that? Wasn’t it supposed to open doors to distant rooms where original, impassioned music is being made without focus groups and marketing executives? If you dig a little soul, funk and fun spicing your modern musical stew, I’ll save you some searching: Brian J & the Pimps of Joytime (http://heymrj.com and http://myspace.com/pimpsofjoytime) have just the recipe for you. And no bubblegum flavoring. Joytime’s MySpace ...