I am not a big fan of classical music, and it stems from a few things: No real exposure to it. No one in my family ever played it for me or taught me to appreciate it. No education on it. I went to a highly gifted Magnet school, but it wasn't until the Humanities high school I attended that I ever remember discussing the music with teachers. Stereotypical feelings towards it. Classical music is for stuffed shirts and pompous fools; serial killers love classical; it just isn't cool music-- only nerds like it. Now that I am adult, I have run out of cool musical trends to explore. I have become one of those old people who deplore the music their kids listen to. I try to keep an open mind towards all this mumble rap and Auto Tune shit, but the reality is: even if I did like it (and some of it I really do) I am too old to be mucking around in the sandbox with the wee bairns. Time to grow up and act my age, right? I forget how much classical music has played a part ...

Ednaswap, a '90s underground pop group led by singer/songwriter Anne Preven, is the focus of this podcast. I think all of us who consider ourselves diehard music fan would concede that, at one time or another, we have had that awful feeling when a band or song you like suddenly becomes huge for all the wrong reasons. It's like when AFI (or whoever it was) covered Don Henley's "The Boys Of Summer". What did I ever do to them to make them hate me in such a manner that they desecrated such a great pop tune? I mean, other than hate and detest all that pop-punk to its rotten, putrid core, what exactly did I do? In the case of "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia, it's almost the inverse: an underrated song by a marginal cult band gets enormous thanks to her cover of said tune, and even though she kind of ruined it, she also did something no hipster record label or West Coast A&R guy could do for a group like Ednaswap: parlay the song into a massive po...

This is the second half of the two-parter I did with Coolhouse, a musical duo featuring J.J. Schoch and Dolly Ramirez. This hour mostly has the leftovers of what we recorded that first time out, but they are far from warmed-over outtakes: there's a protest tune in the mix, plus a sample of J.J. on the double bass, and a piano composition by him as well. Then we go behind the scenes and hear previews from their upcoming debut, which is being touched up in their home studio. I added some songs from heavyweights like Van Morrison and X. But I spend the last ten minutes going off on what I feel is a negative trend in podcasting: the proliferation of troll-ish shows that merely feature stuck-up snot-nosed know-nothings talking trash about music they barely understand or have the taste to critique. Recently I listened to one such show, and the irony is that when another show with similar content came down the pike, I got the two confused. That's because they had almost identical...

For Easter this year I headed out back west. I had booked the flight back in December of last year when my son and I couldn't get affordable tickets to Los Angeles. It pays to book early, so we decided to come out for the Spring. In addition to seeing my family, I also got to see my girl, the lovely Wendy. She is moving out to join me in Indianapolis in a few months but we've been doing the long-distance-relationship thing... and it's going great. I think it mostly has to do with being friends for a long time before we ever entertained the idea of getting closer: she and I have known each other for over 25 years. Another person I've known for quite some time-- although not as long --is Coolhouse  vocalist Dolly Ramirez. Our bond is closer to 14 years, but in that time I've seen her go through a few marriages and many different bands. Now, she has joined up with a longtime friend of hers, the other half of Coolhouse: JJ Schoch, a multi-instrumentalist...

I haven't seen  Passing Strange  on the stage yet, but I did watch the movie directed by Spike Lee. I felt a special stake in the production, as it was written and composed by Stew aka Mark Stewart, a singer/songwriter/musician hailing from Los Angeles whose band The Negro Problem was one of my favorite bands of the '90's. Continuing with my focus on obscure small bands that never made the leap to mainstream success, this one is a little different, seeing that Stew won a Tony (Best Book) for his rock musical extravaganza. It always feels good to see something you championed way back in the day get the attention you always knew it deserved. Stew's songwriting talent has been criminally overlooked for far too long, and the success of the musical has only emboldened him to create new and more things for the public to consume and digest. 'Tis a pity The Negro Problem didn't make it to the big time (they toured with the likes of Counting Crows but never rea...

Continuing in the same vein as the past few podcasts, this week's entry is about a three-piece band from the East Coast (Delaware area to be precise) called Papas Fritas. They were on the Minty Fresh label (same as The Cardigans) and I saw them open for a number of bands during the Nineties at small venues in L.A. In addition to opening for The Cardigans, who were riding high on their  single "Lovefool"  which was also featured in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet movie, they also opened for Blur, The Eels, and The Sugarplastic, whom I featured in Hour 30 a few weeks back. They seem to be largely inactive now so listing their links seems almost pointless, but they can be found on  Facebook , which doesn't appear to have been updated since 2016. However, they are worth checking out as all their albums are available  for purchase online. I was a big fan of them, and I re-ignited my interest in them when they guested on  Yo Gabba Gabba   in 2011. The po...

I bought the album Not In Kansas Anymore by ' 90s alt-rap band Basehead  around the same time I was creating a live rap group of my own with my buddy Syndrome. I was a little disappointed that Basehead wasn't really a full-fledged hip-hop group, but it also made me like the music more. It was far more original than I figured, and helped us to forge ahead with our musically adventurous vision of using live instruments behind dope lyrics. Michael Ivey still sticks by his eccentric, eclectic agenda, albeit now it is tempered with a healthy dose of religious and spiritual proselytizing. It's still an unconventional mix of the sacred and the profane, and I am taking time today to pay tribute to Ivey and his one-of-a-kind style. In a day and age where rappers are being accused of mumbling and not being particularly braggadocious, Ivey's influence is both completely understandable and also inadvertently baffling. When the album  Play With Toys  debuted in the early ...