Series of posts

  • The Core is Getting Soft.6: Ohm…Ohm….Ohm….

    While the last post in this series on plug ins and virtual instruments, “Tuba Time,” proved that there are some truly atrocious digital products out there, this should not cause one to give up hope.  One of the best software developers out there, the French company Ohm Force, make fantastic products, and they are on…

  • Corporate Welfare.2: Subsidizing Sallie Mae

    Continuing this series on the publicly funded nature of so called private enterprise in this country…. Sometimes subsidies know how to disguise themselves.  Blackwater’s defense contracts bring them direct cash payments for no-bid contracts.  But student lenders like Sallie Mae get their government cheese in the form of regulations on interest rates.  In a double…

  • The Core is Gettin’ Soft.5: Tuba Time!

    I recently saw an interview with Lydia Lunch in which she said that the guitar bass and drums sound was dead, dead, dead.  She admonished people to move on and play the tuba.  So of course I was thrilled to find a free tuba sample library this evening, which I am currently downloading.  I’m not…

  • Corporate Welfare.1: Blackwater’s Warfare Welfare

    (This is the first in a new series of posts about how corporations that claim to generate profit in the private sector are heavily subsidized by taxpayers in ways that I could only wish fields like education and healthcare were.  For an overview on that, see “Free Lunch:  How the Richest Americans Enrich Themselves at…

  • The Core is Getting Soft.4: Redwirez Rulez

    It’s a tough enough job convincing folks that they shouldn’t look down on music software when it comes to stuff people use when holed up in recording studios.  But the guitar amplifier is a public affair.  Imagine a live rock band pulling out a laptop onstage instead of rolling out fearsome refrigerator size amplifiers.  …

  • Other John Davises.5: The Day the Dream Died

    Dreams.  We all have them.  We all want to live them.  We all suffer from this misguided aspiration when we wake up to the reality of lived experience. Green Day can sing about the Boulevard of Broken Dreams all they want, but they’ve never tasted anything like the intense disappointment I have recently experienced after…

  • Secrets of the Temple.2: Double Dutch

    (This is a follow up to the post Secrets of the Temple.1: More Than a Doorstop, dated 1/13/13.) As I wrote in my first post on William Greider’s history of the Federal Reserve board, one of the aims of “Secrets of the Temple” is to question whether Ronald Reagan really was the primary source of…

  • Top 40 Over 40.12: Morton Feldman, Piano and String Quartet

          I’ve listened to lots of records I’ve liked over the last 10 years, but the recording the Kronos Quartet made of this piece is probably my favorite.  It seems remarkable that such a strange thing of beauty could be recorded at Skywalker Sound, George Lucas’s compound in Northern California.  Morton Feldman spent the…

  • Other John Davises.4: My Life as a Painter on the Plains

    It’s hard to keep track of all of your parallel lives when you have a ubiquitous name.  They criss cross the English speaking world like railroad tracks.  Fortunately, I have spies.  Agents.  Tentacles.  Informants.  Eyes and ears, everywhere. Like in thrift stores in Nebraska. Megan Siebe is one of these.  Her surveillance skills factored heavily…

  • Top 40 Over 40.11: Wurst is also Best!

    I cannot pretend to write an objective review of today’s entry into my Top 40 Over 40 countdown, Transcendental Youth by the Mountain Goats.  You see, I compete in an annual NFL pool with John Darnielle and Peter Hughes.  I’m indebted to Peter for running this pool and to John for keeping me out of…