“If you come in peace, then drink from the bass within.” Raz Mesinai While in the real world the clash of cultures can lead to violence and heartache, it can also lead to brilliant art, as sparks fly from the nexus of conflicting, competing or just plain different worldviews. I …

Here is my day today: I sent out a group email to all 500+ of our members via my Compuserve account regarding our 2nd anniversary and other administrative things. I was told – when AOL absorbed Compuserve and we were switched over to the AOL mail system a couple of …

Wow: sunrise, sunset and all of that sentimental crap – it really does seem like I just put up a post about our first anniversary: One year, 1.5 million page views, 19,838 referrers, 13,817 comments, 7162 entries, 311 blogcritics Our second year has been a textbook case of adjusting to …

My parents, especially my dad, were very good about sharing their enthusiasms with their children: they wanted us to understand why they liked certain records, TV shows, movies, etc. It helped us to know them, the world around us, and made us feel important to them. Once of my warmest …

The Vote For Change tour has very impressive lineups and is generating a big buzz – of the six different touring units, I think the Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band / R.E.M. / John Fogerty / Bright Eyes group the most impressive. It just got a little more …

Although one of the biggest players is leaving the scene, the jam band model of steady touring, long and varied shows, and encouraging fan community is now a viable alternative to the label-dependent radio and CDs model that has become a victim of the changing market of media consolidation, file …

The crazy freaky ego-tripping hyper-sexed drugged-up persona “Rick James” finally killed vastly talented singer, songwriter, arranger, producer, musician James Johnson Jr. at the age of 56. He dressed like Bootsy, drugged like Sly Stone, strutted like a pimp, but invented his own brand of melodic, brassy funk in an incredibly …

The deed is done: The new company, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, will rival Vivendi’s Universal Music Group for market share. Sony BMG, which will be headquartered in New York, instantly becomes home to a stable of hit-makers, including Britney Spears, OutKast, Aerosmith and Travis Tritt. The company also now controls …

Received wisdom says that Ray Charles, who died in June at 73, did his greatest work between the mid-’50s and mid-’60s, and while this is undoubtedly true, it is also wrong to dismiss the final 40 years of Ray’s career out of hand. Ironically, one of Charles’s best albums of …

Phish are going out in style. August 14 and 15, 80,000 fans are expected to descend upon Coventry, Vermont for Phish’s farewell festival. Fewer than 70,000 tickets were sold and no one will be admitted without a ticket, so in order to better accomodate the superflous 10,000 (I like that: …