Category Archives: Music

When a Woman Appropriates Cock-Rock

Posted on August 4, 2015 by ken

Face hidden by long hair, blasting overdriven bolts of atonal noise through sheets of white-hot feedback that obscure the instruments and the unintelligible vocals. Is this rock&roll? If the face is a white man, and the atonal noise is blasting … Continue reading →

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Tom Baker

Posted on October 11, 2014 by ken

Tom Baker was my first doctor, and even Peter Capaldi can never replace him in my heart. Near the peak of my obsession with the show, shortly before Baker’s departure, the Human League released “Tom Baker,” an instrumental b-side with … Continue reading →

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“Just when you think you’ve scraped the bottom…”

Posted on August 5, 2014 by ken

“…you find that you’re just scraping the surface.” For a few years in the early 1990s, during my exile in New Jersey, I worked a genuine 9-5 job. WNYC was my lifeline, and Chopin’s Marzurka in C Major (Op. 24 … Continue reading →

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Streaming Music Down the Drain

Posted on June 28, 2014 by ken

I hate streaming music services. I hate them as a listener, I hate what they’re doing to music, and I hate their business models. I believe these services are harmful to listeners as well as musicians, and that music lovers … Continue reading →

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Why Didn’t You Just Tell Them You Were a Moderate Man?

Posted on September 2, 2013 by ken

“Oh mighty thing!” said Vera to Frank, “Why didn’t you just tell them you were a moderate man and leave it at that instead of goosing yourself all over the room?” “Patience, Vera,” said Frank. Terry Shute, who was sitting … Continue reading →

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This Is, Indeed, a Disco

Posted on August 24, 2013 by ken

This ain’t no disco? Oh really? That Talking Heads lyric was always misquoted (as David Byrne complains in his new book) but from the look of the charts, this is, indeed, a disco. The two biggest hits of the summer … Continue reading →

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Dancing to a Found Harmonium

Posted on June 22, 2013 by ken

Perhaps it is a good sign that I welcomed summer with an all-day outdoor gig yesterday. I didn’t play all day; Big Road in Chelsea sponsored a stage for Make Music New York so I played a set with Big … Continue reading →

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Signing Off On Madam Medusa

Posted on April 20, 2013 by ken

Following the death of Margaret Thatcher, I found myself thinking frequently of UB40’s great song about her, “Madam Medusa,” from their first and best album, 1980’s Signing Off. Their later pop successes with “Red Red Wine” and “I Got You … Continue reading →

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Delay: Watching the Music Flow

Posted on June 18, 2012 by ken

I’m sitting in the Winter Garden as Steve Reich’s Six Pianos fills the space around me. No delay or reverb effect can match the sound of a piano note traveling 500 feet, hitting glass or stone, and returning. Reich’s pieces … Continue reading →

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There were barricades on Prince Street I thought it was a movie at first (Unexepected Elegy for Etan)

Posted on April 21, 2012 by ken

Thursday night I went into Soho for my weekly rehearsal with the Antelope Dance Project and Prince Street was full of news vans and police trucks and barricades. And for once, it was something real — not a movie, not … Continue reading →

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