Harps and Angels
August 29, 2008Randy Newman’s Harps and Angels is right up there with the best of his work, sardonic, poignant, clever, and filled with compassion and humor. He is able to comment on the American condition directly, without pulling his punches in a way no one else can. ‘A Few Words In Defense of Our Country’, and ‘A…
A Man Named Pearl
August 26, 2008I just saw this over the weekend. A small understated film about a man who does something extraordinary with his life and doesn’t let anything get in his way. The music in the web trailer is over the top though….don’t know what they were thinking. The film score is a slightly whimsical small band jazz…
Shelby Lynne does Bacharach
April 6, 2008I’ve been listening to Shelby Lynne’s Dusty Springfield tribute, “Just A Little Lovin” quite a bit the last few days. It’s a great sounding record, beautifully under-produced by Phil Ramone. I keep returning to her version of the Bacharach/David tune ‘Anyone Who Had A Heart’. This is a very hip tune. The harmonic structure travels…
Where do we go from here?
January 21, 2008Change is the only constant in the world. The bigger the shift, the larger the opportunity. When people are coming from a place of scarcity and fear they hang on to what they know and miss the opportunity to embrace big change with creativity and intelligence. The massive shifts in the record industry are creating…
What happened to all the good music?
January 21, 2008Much is being said these days about the huge changes in the record industry. Future business and marketing models have been endlessly discussed. Music piracy, the drop in CD sales and the bloated overhead of an industry built on an international hit-driven model. The industry sustained itself for years getting consumers to replace their LP…
CD Baby and Snocap
October 24, 2007The story of CD Baby’s partnership with Snocap struck a real chord with me.Technology has played a powerful role in the transformation of the music industry, starting with wire and tape recorders, the phonograph, and the electric guitar. In the 1980s other musicians and I would joke about “phoning in our parts.” It’s not a…
John Prine
July 28, 2007From Eddie Harris to John Prine…Well, there’s the Chicago connection. Are you detecting a theme? I’ve been a huge fan since Mr. Prine traded his mailman hat for a spot on the stage at The Earl of Oldtown in the late 1960s. He has mastered the art of distilling universal moments of humanity into emotionally…
Thinking of Eddie
July 27, 2007Lately I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Eddie Harris, the late tenor saxophonist. Maybe it’s my Chicago roots, I don’t know. ‘Listen Here’ with it’s simple 2-chord vamp captures the minimalist essence of everything that feels right to me about jazz. During his career Mr. Harris was considered jazz-funk and fell somewhere in the…
US Copyright Board Ruling
April 17, 2007The recent ruling by the US Copyright Royalty Board creates a dire situation for small, independent purveyors of streaming Internet music. I am a composer myself and certainly want to be compensated for my work but I believe this decision is not in the best interest of artists, record labels, or the audience. The music…