Back in the day, my friends and I liked to make themed mixtapes and mix CDs. Themes were challenging to make because we couldn't be accused of just haphazardly throwing them together. (One lazy way of putting a mixtape together was to basically plunder someone else's mixtape, particularly the tape of someone whom the recipient had never met) A theme meant that you'd taken more time, energy and thought than normal in assembling the mix. It wasn't just songs you liked-- they had to fit the criterion you'd established for yourself. One of the best theme mixtapes I ever made was based on a friend's idea: he decided to make an "Off-White Album" based on alternate versions of songs from The Beatles' White Album (which, as every serious fan knows, is titled simply The Beatles ) that he culled from the Beatles Anthology 3 collection mixed in with songs from the actual album. I went one further and made a mix composed of covers of the songs from the W...

We conclude the second part of our interview with Cherrys singer and co-founder Emma Wade. In this hour we get a little deeper into subjects as broad and far-flung as the worship of fallen idols; sexual predators such as Louis C.K. and Harvey Weinstein; onstage personas vs. real-life personalities; and the changing mores of the times. By the end of the hour Emma gives us some links on how to find her music online but this hour is mostly devoted to discussing the repercussions of the actions of artists both past and present, alive or dead. We agree that it's a slippery slope when conflating the myth and the reality of the lives of entertainers and artists. As a female in the music industry, Emma gives a realistic perspective on what's going down in current affairs and how they apply to performers and musicians today. We play music by Hole, The Beatles, Prince and The Doors, as well as another selection from The Cherrys. As usual, I hog the conversation. Try as I might, ...

Cherry Baby aka Emma Wade of the band  The Cherrys  sits down with me at a popular coffee shop in Fishers, Indiana called The Well  to chew the fat concerning the local Indy/Indie music scene and other topics, some of which will be covered in next week's podcast. At this point, I don't really forsee having any podcast interviews be less than an hour in length unless it turns out really bad. They're all gonna be two-parters, even as I managed to make this week's podcast 51 minutes long as opposed to a whole hour. First things first, however: I saw St. Vincent play a show at  The Egyptian Room , and it was great. I open the show with an excerpt from her live show that leads into a stirring rendition of "New York" which she insists could've been titled "Indianapolis" if only the city name didn't have so many syllables. It makes me wonder what kind of connection she has with this city-- is it just the standard "This city is the...

So imagine my surprise when I discovered through a friend that Annie Clark aka St. Vincent has a podcast titled "Mixtape Delivery Service"! I absolutely adore St. Vincent, and so it feels like some cosmic connection when it really is just an extravagant coincidence that we have such similarly-themed podcasts. Of course, she is famous and talented, and has been doing the podcast since 2015 at least... so I will definitely look like the one who is biting her style. Luckily, despite my insistence that I have my ear to the ground and my finger on the pulse of what's new, I actually live in a bubble (the size of the state of Indiana) and hardly ever listen to podcasts, and did not know about her podcast even though I saw her live in Indianapolis around the time she was starting her Mixtape Delivery Service. Shows you how hip I am... But I continue on undeterred. I could always change the name and the concept, after all... This is merely my first foray into podcasting a...

Yes, that is a picture of the real me, and right next to me is Roky Erickson , the legendary Texas rock pioneer whose seminal garage band The 13th Floor Elevators pretty much provided the blueprint for American psychedelic music in the '60's. This was taken at Canter's Deli in 2008 after a Halloween show I did with my band-at-the-time   Ninefinger . I chose one of Roky's song, "I Walked With A Zombie", to open the podcast because everything Roky does is geared towards Halloween: the writer of such songs as "Creature With The Atom Brain" and "Night Of The Vampire" certainly deserves to be included in anything related to All Hallow's Eve. But as much as I could devote an entire show to the likes of Roky and his storied past, this week's installment has me pondering the more mainstream aspects of modern music. Especially since I now live in a state where country music is more popular than rock and big touring bands tend to skip by...