Owlspotting

Do you have the time
To listen to me whine
About nothing and everything
All at once…
I was safely sheltered by European pop, dance and techno (most of it coming from Germany and the Scandinavian countries) until I heard Green Day tear into “Basket Case.”
I was in eight grade, with little rock references other than Elvis and the [...]

How do you judge your music?
Is it the brilliance of the guitar riffs? The digital perfection of the production? The intellectual ambiguity of the lyrics? The ass-shake-potential of the bass? The “add to my sex playlist” quality?
Those are all good categories, and there are scores I didn’t mention. They are all safe conversational bets that [...]

A teenager was stabbed in Brooklyn late last week because he refused to hand over his iPod to his attackers, who fled with the mp3 player, a cell phone and the boy’s sneakers. The front page of the Sunday New York Post read “iPOD MURDER” and the New York Times also ran a brief on [...]

A post on the music-dominated blog BrooklynVegan inspired me to compile a top five of albums released so far in 2005. I can safely rank the first two:
1. The Decemberists - Picaresque
2. Bright Eyes - I’m wide awake… it’s morning
And unranked, here are the other three:
System of a Down - Mesmerize
Hot Hot Heat - Elevator
The [...]

Let me return to my comments about musical condescension and musicitas. A friend who read my post directed me to Pitchfork’s official review of Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah. It was a predictable read that says less about the music than about the indie-rock climate the record is being reviewed in.
“There’s something really refreshing [...]

The recent band endorsement war between the Village Voice (The Hold Steady) and NY Press (The Fame) convinced me to go see The Fame at the Knitting Factory. It was my first New York City show and it seemed appropriate to check out such a hyped local band.
The Fame does play catchy classic rock, but [...]