The Best Rhythm Sections of Each Decade Draft

I’m working to try to think up the most impactful rhythm sections (generally defined by me as just drummer and bassist) of each decade. I’m not done. But I’ve got to get some of this stuff down.

1950s - The first great Miles Davis quintet so that’s Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers primarily
1960s - Motown - James Jamerson and Richard “Pistol” Allen
1970s - The Wailers - Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett and Carlton Barrett
1980s - I don’t know, I have a strong feeling that what Quincy and Michael did was the most compelling grooving of the decade, but I also feel that Stewart Copeland and Sting made something special and worth celebrating, but it doesn’t always feel. . .rhythm sectiony?
1990s - Rage Against the Machine - Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk (I think I’m good with this)
2000s - The Dap-Kings - I’m not the biggest Sharon Jones fan in the world but the totality of what the Dap-Kings sound did to bring some of those vintage rhythm sections back into the conversation needs to be discussed
2010s - Maybe too early to call. Hiatus Kaiyote seems to me to be a nominee. The Derrick Hodge/Chris Dave continuum with with Maxwell (late 2000s TBH) and Robert Glasper

Okay. Bye. Continuing to work on this.

My Creative Mornings Presentation

I’m really proud of a recent talk I gave at CreativeMornings. I was nervous coming in to it, but I thought about it, worked on it and I’m proud of the product. If you get the chance please do watch. If you want to see more of these, check out their website.

Does Music Matter?

The rehearsal space for my bands is the basement and it’s looked rough basically since 2021. Whenever I started really going back to work at The Current whenever I wanted to (we were never fully remote but they encouraged hosts to be remote as much as possible) the space went to shit. Piles of stuff, cables, detritus, turntables with Band of Gypsys on channel 1 and Eleganza on channel 2. Turntables are barely plugged in. The printer doesn’t work. My wife has a massive soda stream canister on the desk she uses to work down here. . .does she use a soda stream? Nope. Is that canister blocking most of the view of her monitor? Absolutely. But I knew Heiruspecs would have a lot of rehearsals for our upcoming shows. And I also now that a cluttered room and space is kryptonite for making me want to get in on the work. Write new music, write more of this blog here et cetera. If I’m stepping over my 2021 taxes sitting on the floor to get to the desk I won’t get to the desk as often. As I’m writing now I’m fresh off of 30 minutes cycling out of my neighbor’s sauna listening to “Best Jazz Songs of 2023” playlist on Spotify and feeling like 3/4 of a million dollars.

After I got the rehearsal space into pretty good shape I had the opportunity to come down and run a couple basslines before going to work. Some of the new Heiruspecs songs are a handful on bass, and let’s be honest some of the old ones are too. I feel in good shape lately on my instrument because of that monthly Big Trouble gig. . .plus a monthly rehearsal for said gig, plus practicing for said rehearsal and gig, it’s adding up compared to where I had been at. My fingers feel good, my ears feel pretty good. My spirit feels good on the instrument. I have a 1*15 Mesa Boogie speaker down here, with an Mesa MPulse600 Head I bought right when Heiruspecs started going out on the road. I don’t take it out of the basement anymore. It sounds so fucking good. I’m playing on flatwounds I’ve had on the bass since I was Dessa’s bass player. At least 6 years ago. I haven’t replaced a single string on my bass since becoming a father, I assure you of that. For a bass player working my corner, dead strings are beautiful. Anywho, I’m running some bass line and I remember just hitting a B on the second fret of the A string and the note and this thought washed over me: “this is the most important shit you do”. When you are an anchor of a band. When you are holding a note for just the right length, and you’re ready for the next part, and the drummer is locked in, and the writing is solid, and the band sounds energetic. . .is there something I do that is more than that? In a fundamental sense it feels less important than radio. I like radio more in many specific ways, I also like radio in a lot of philosophical ways more than performing my own music. But as far as importance, holding that B in the corner of this room that is covered with pictures of me and my friends having played music since the mid 90s, it’s centering. It’s reminding me that my life largely consists of a continuation of the things I thought were the coolest on earth before I did them. Every note felt so special. Bass is such a special instrument. It is the ultimate stealth instrument. It often doesn’t have to change when every other instrument does, it can also completely change the valence of a piece with an utterly subtle change. From time to time I reference an idea that Jeff Chang introduced me to in his book “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop”. The idea is that of dub history. You have the history of an event, of an era, of a person. And you also have the dub history, the B side, the smaller stories. Slate’s One Year program seems to be telling the dub history of an assortment of random years from the last 100 years. Basslines are the dub history of music. Not the guitar solos, not the lyrics, not the interview with the singer and the discussion about her belabored reworking of an earlier demo and turning it into gold. The dub history: legato, open string, passing tone, ghost note, unexplainable placement of a non-chord tone on beat one, one chord played across a song otherwise filled with single notes. That’s one of the most rewarding parts of Questlove being an icon. This is a dub historian on the mainstage. It’s exhilarating precisely because it’s not. It’s inspiring because Questlove’s stories are about scheduling sessions, being intimidated by drum machines, being overwhelmed by Dilla. It’s insider baseball. Playing that B I know I’m telling the dub history for Heiruspecs, a nothing band that means everything to a significant amount of people. A band that made some jams that have meant the world to some people. I know of one dude who has the lyrics of a Heiruspecs song tattooed on his arm. I got the dub history tattooed on my beautiful butt, the octave pedal settings, the dotted half note rest.

Jim Anton is the best bass player in Minnesota. John Munson is Minnesota’s bassist though. He played with Semisonic, that’s semi-iconic internationally but that’s the king shit right here. When you do the math I think they are the only BIG THINGS rock band from the 90s out of Minneapolis. In the intervening thirty years and the ten years prior he’s ran some great bands, collaborated with some people and generally is at the center of some great musical moments. I don’t know how much older he is than me but I’m going to say 12 years. That feels good. John Munson is 54 in my dub history of him. Maybe about 12 years ago I’m doing a thing at McNally Smith (not working there yet) and I believe he’s getting his band "The Twilight Hours” off the ground. John Munson at the time might not have been at a vastly different age than I am now, and I know he’s got kids in his life. But Munson mentioned that he and Matt Wilson were driving down to Chicago for a gig and they made this observation to each other: “this is simultaneously the most useless shit we do with our life and the most important”. And at the time Munson shared that with me I struggled to understand it. Driving to Chicago to play music seemed unimpeachably like the most important thing I do in my life. A distant second might be you know. . .working at a group home for kids with special needs? But driving to Chicago for a gig, what is better? What is more important? But now, age 42 me radio host and father of two, as almost every gig involves a serious interruption of previously scheduled activities, it involves time away from my kids, which involves more work for my wife (you see she’s already overworked, she’s reading PDFs through the shadows of a sodastream canister in a clean ass rehearsal space). I get it. But listen:

At that moment, when I’m hitting that B, it’s the most important thing in my life. Last night Heiruspecs played to a sold out Turf Club audience. We’ve been doing a Holiday Classic basically straight since the early 2000s, and for me this was one of the best. We debuted new music, the bass drum was loud as shit, I was really happy with our playing. THIS NEXT THOUGHT IS GOING TO SOUND ARROGANT AND VERY WELL MAY BE BUT I AM JUST GUESSING THAT YOU WILL ROCK WITH ME CAUSE YOU’VE COME THIS FAR. I have to accept that Heiruspecs has honest to goodness fans who like our shit, who listen to our shit, who care about what we do. It’s inarguably true that we do. We have decent listenership on Spotify, when we put out physical product a small but reliable cohort of listeners buy it. When we play people come out. One of the best rappers ever to come out of MN, Meta, just played a poorly attended show in Minneapolis. That’s a tragedy, the man is unbelievably gifted. As Heiruspecs was playing to a really big crowd last night I took a moment to be thankful. It’s not a guarantee that your crowd will stay with you, will put up with your shit. Meta should have that when he comes back to Minnesota. Simple. My struggle when I play up there is I think about my wife, and my neighbors and my high school friends who come out cause it’s a good night out and I think “what are they actually doing while we play. . .are they intent upon on deVon’s solo, are they connected to Felix’s lyrics?” Or are they looking at their phone, waving down a bartender, trying to remember the name of someone they recognize from across the room. Some of all of that happens, but what actually fills up the house is people who I’m not legitimately friends with, people who like the jams, who want to hear the jams, who want to hear the lyrics, hear the solos, enjoy the art. And I have to admit that for all of my confidence in myself and my projects, that is a thing I am working to process. When I’m digging into my bass and trying to deliver the best sounds I can, it’s the most important thing in my life. Playing the bass is this physical thing, it’s not physical like drums, but it’s not typing, it’s not without a physical engagement, especially the way I play. I woke up this morning feeling like a 42 year old man who put on brand new sneakers and played a 98 minute set and then hung out and chatted up the bar for another hour. But I spent the day today being easy on myself, taking my time, spending extra play time with my daughters, reading things a bit more slowly, pulling out the headphones to actually talk to the neighbors on the walk. The last couple weeks of making an extra radio program for every weekend, navigating Hanukkah, a Heiruspecs show and more. . .it’s been a lot. But there was a lot of release after the Heiruspecs show. I hugged most of the band. We don’t get to see each other that often, we get to play less. We get to play a steamy ass sold out show that we curated ourselves less often that. One of our most dedicated fans is an amazing woman named Oogi and she pointed out sweetly to me at the beginning of the show that. . . “someday you’ll stop doing these”. She’s right. At some point the stars won’t align for us to do Holiday Classics. At some point the stars won’t align for us to really be a band. We’ve made it 23 years. That’s insane. It’s my life’s longest professional project. And everything else in my life professionally comes out of that. And when I played that B in a newly clean basement practice space. . .I was thankful for where it started and where it’s going.

The Best Record Released Every Year Since 1959

1959 - Kind of Blue - Miles Davis
1960 - At Last! - Etta James
1961 - The Blues and the Abstract Truth - Oliver Nelson
1962 - Waltz for Debby - Bill Evans
1963 - The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan
1964 - Folk Singer - Muddy Waters
1965 - A Love Supreme - John Coltrane
1966 - Sinatra at the Sands - Frank Sinatra
1967 - Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles
1968 - Electric Ladyland - Jimi Hendrix
1969 - Abbey Road - The Beatles
1970 - Moondance - Van Morrison
1971 - Blue - Joni Mitchell
1972 - Exile on Main Street - Rolling Stones
1973 - Headhunters - Herbie Hancock
1974 - Standing on the Verge of Getting it On - Funkadelic
1975 - There’s No Place Like America Today - Curtis Mayfield
1976 - Songs in the Key of Life - Stevie Wonder
1977 - Aja - Steely Dan
1978 - The Cars - The Cars
1979 - London Calling - The Clash
1980 - Remain in Light - Talking Heads
1981 - Street Songs - Rick James
1982 - Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen
1983 - Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes
1984 - Purple Rain - Prince
1985 - Hounds of Love - Kate Bush
1986 - Slippery When Wet - Bon Jovi
1987 - Sign O’ The Times - Prince
1988 - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - Public Enemy
1989 - Pretty Hate Machine - Nine Inch Nails
1990 - Sex Packets - Digital Underground
1991 - The Low End Theory - A Tribe Called Quest
1992 - Blind Melon - Blind Melon
1993 - Enter the 36 Chambers - Wu-Tang Clan
1994 - Illmatic - Nas
1995 - Post - Bjork
1996 - Entroducing - DJ Shadow
1997 - Surfacing - Sarah Maclachlan
1998 - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill - Lauryn Hill
1999 - When the Pawn - Fiona Apple
2000 - Voodoo - D’Angelo
2001 - The Blueprint - Jay-Z
2002 - Kill the Moonlight - Spoon
2003 - Get Rich or Die Tryin’ - 50 Cent
2004 - Madvillainy - Madvillain
2005 - Sleater-Kinney - The Woods
2006 - Ani DiFranco - Reprieve
2007 - Dinosaur Jr. - Beyond

Open Mike Eagle is Creating Amazing Content

I seek a lot of escape, education, distraction and magic through my ears. Walk the dogs, drive to groceries, lift weight, wash dishes, put away clothes, shovel the snow that will one day arrive, do more dishes, sit in the sauna. I’ve got earbuds in for all of that. I love radio. I love music. I love podcasts. I’ve got my go-tos. I was just smiling from ear to ear today because Bomani Jones is back making podcasts and today in reference to a black quarterback phenomenon I barely understand because I don’t watch football Bomani still lined up an incredible run of mildly obscure references to white R&B/soul singers. Laughed just at the construction and at how much he was cracking himself up (19:31 in the video).

I don’t want on YouTube because what has time for entertainment in my chapter in life right now is my ears. The eyes and the hands are busy. But having Bomani in an unscripted video experience is the ideal. The man is wildly talented but it’s more him without the script. In my opinion he doesn’t need a writer’s room, he needs a podcast. And he’s back.

But Open Mike Eagle is taking the cake. He has been doing a podcast called “What Had Happened Was” for a handful of years and it has the production quality and narrative arc of an interview show, but the comfy bullshitty chew the fat energy of a “same folks every week” podcast. He hits both by having the same guest in for an entire season. At some point even if Open Mike Eagle isn’t friends with guests like El-P, Prince Paul, Questlove et cetera. . .they grow to find a chemistry. Cause Mike is a wildly charismatic person. The show is so commited to providing a level of quality that I think must be such a small market. The theme songs are co-created with the guests and they’re awesome. When they come upon a topic that would benefit from an audio clip, they take the time to drop it in just right. It is an incredible thing to listen to. I love the Roots. Right, I’m not saying I’ve bought every record from the back half of their career. But it’s so interesting to hear Questlove discuss the “tribulations” of a group that I think of as just such a profound success relative to my live band hip-hop trajectory. But Questlove is sharing it all, and sharing it compellingly and Open Mike Eagle is a huge part of that recipe. It is just absolutely invigorating to listen to this podcast and I’m just hear typing in hopes that Open Mike Eagle gets a couple more listeners off this. Cause when you are making world class shit people should take the time to spread the word and get more people involved. Open Mike Eagle is doing the damn thing and you should listen. For now watch this little clip but this whole season is an audio journey I recommend you take.

My Last Walk with Zoe

We’ve had a brick building of a dog for the last maybe 8 weeks. Her name is Zoe. She is a Mastador. A mastiff mixed with a labrador. I didn’t need to explain that one. She’s middle aged. Maybe 9. The man that really took care of her died, somewhat suddenly. The man’s husband had too much on her hand, couldn’t walk the dog. Grown kids, they couldn’t/wouldn’t help. There was another dog. Zoe was always a temporary foster. We were just rocking with her for awhile and it’s been “nice”. She’s got a good soul. She is needy as all shit. Like right now she is lying in the kitchen while I sit in the living room and me and Warren are watching the Wolves on delay. But if Zoe were here she would be working her big ass wet snout underneath my hand to demand some attention even though she knows I’m blogging hits over here. And she’s relentless. If you rub her for 22 minutes and stop on minute 23 she’ll look at you with a face that says “fuck is the hold up big guy, let’s keep a rubbin’”. Because she’s a big ass dog and she came carrying extra weight on her frame I foolishly thought she was chill. She loves to walk. (are you wondering why you are reading a long blog post about a dog that you don’t know at all and I don’t even know that well, I am). But she’s an enthusiastic walker. At first that was all for the good. But she has no etiquette on the dog walk. She will pull as hard as she wants. She pisses where ever she wants (I appreciate that). And in the past maybe three weeks, if she sees any dog in any kind of distance she is 100% committed to losing her shit. My dog Warren wants in on the shit losing so now walking the dogs is an exercise in absolute vigilance of crossing the street at even the sighting of a husky squirrel. It’s a lot. But, like all these dogs that Rachel brings into our life. . .I will miss the beautiful things, the annoying things and I will love the process. Some family in Prior Lake that has some chicken chasing opportunities next door (THAT IS A GHOSTFACE LYRIC I’M SURE OF IT) is going to get Zoe. And she’s going to have fun. She’s going to start some shit and she’s also going to be an awesome dog for this family. Best to you Zoe. I’ll miss you, but like, just somewhat.

Sharing Your Music Is A Vulnerable Moment

On Sunday Heiruspecs got together to share some new music with each other. The process of this is different for every group and style of music. But, since I started sharing songs with fellow band members in about seventh grade there’s been some similarities. You are standing in front of a group of your peers, sharing your ideas hoping for some amount of consensus. You want some consensus from your bandmates that the music is good, or that it can be good. Add to that the dynamics of rappers, it changes things a bit more. When you’re sharing music in a group with rappers there’s an additional dynamic. That dynamic is that rappers don’t have a ton to do during the actual sessions where you’re recording the beats. I don’t need to show Felix or Muad’dib the chords. They don’t need to know the inner working of the beats. If they elect to ask or get in to it, no problem. But they don’t have the necessity to do so to navigate their way to their art and their statements. The reason that changes the dynamic is because you might have people in the room whose lack of enthusiasm is further amplified because they are just sitting there not engaged with asking about chord qualities or loop lengths.

My first couple bands I felt a fair amount of comfort shooting out song ideas because the band was started with me as a central piece. I played in a band called Grin. I wasn’t the singer, thank god for all of us, but it was understood that for Jon Baker, our singer, it was presumed I’d be bringing in some music and some lyrics. We were just learning how to play music, I think we were comfortable bringing those ideas in and exploring them. We were in middle school. I took that shit so seriously and I realize that my parents were probably more thinking, I’ll drop Sean off for a couple hours and life goes on. But to me those hours were the most important part of my week. And in retrospect, some of the most important hours of my life. Laughing, fighting, joking, and really drilling shit. I think the groups I’ve been a part of are generally recognized as some of the most efficient and dedicated rehearsers in our community. That’s not strictly good. I think at times we have been too efficient, too all business. But even in those middle school years with Grin we took our rehearsal time serious, we expected people to be on time, we played things til we got them right. I learned a lot. But I learned that it’s hard to bring in a song and tell other people your age how the song goes, what part you hope they’ll play and how you envision the song going.

In middle school some of the difficulty is just the raw insecurity that is the nature of those ages. But even at age 42, there’s something about bringing your sheet, with your chords, and your tempo, and you’re hoping that what you’ve put down is not only great sounding. . .but it leaves enough room for the other players to bring their own greatness to it. You hope you have left enough invitations inside of your writing for other people to do their best work.

As a non-singing bass player who is a pretty bad ass songwriter I can also come into the position where me bringing in music at all is a bit of a nuisance. Through sheer will I forced myself into my brother Steve’s band Catfish Blue. And we found a path to my writing being if not welcome. . .at least expected. But at first my brother was in this situation where he was hunting for a bass player and instead he got a bass player, sibling and incessant writer of tunes that I demanded the group play. I always wanted to just be a bass player. In middle school I would listen to Van Morrison and imagine being a skinny old black man wearing a green suit playing amazing bass with Van Morrison. I know that’s a tall order. Not black, not skinny, not a bass player for Van Morrison. But I thought of this emotional distance and technical authority that a pure bass player could have as something beyond my reach. You know someone who didn’t have to ask what key a song was in, he can just drop in and start adding his sauce to it. But I’ve always had to ask what key. Every once in awhile I’ll drop in and find the groove, but I struggle with that. I was jealous of that technical facility because it was what I saw my friend Conor bring to Catfish Blue. He was the ideal as a rhythm section player. Incredibly committed to each song, but not necessarily bringing an agenda of his own to the songs. A supportive player who was shaping his raw technical facility around songs with tons of artistic investment. Conor’s an amazing player, he still is. Years later, I’m a freshman in college, he’s a senior in high school and I’m sitting on my cordless dorm phone talking to Conor about me moving to Minnesota and the end of the chapter of me being in Catfish Blue. It was a hard phone call, I know it was hard because I know it was two phone calls that we split up because it got too hard. But, while I was in that first phone call sitting on a closed toilet looking in the shower for some privacy; I remember realizing that writing these songs was a gift. It wasn’t the gift I wanted most desperately, but it was the gift I had. The fact that Conor envied something I had in a musical setting was almost unfathomable to me. Knowing that he was gave me more confidence to what I can bring to a musical situation. Man, I love you Conor.

I led the music side of Heiruspecs with a stupid, arrogant iron-fist for the first couple years of the band. I started Heiruspecs in 11th grade. There was an important way to present hip-hop music with a live band and I thought there were maybe three people on Earth who knew how to do it and I was one of them. I loved the music, I studied the music and I wrote the beats, so fuck you very much. I had a great bass teacher at this time at Walker-West. Her name was Laurie Lang. Looks like she’s still active. I brought all this arrogance about my new band into my lessons with her and she just flattened all of it. She basically said that even if I knew exactly what the horn players should do and exactly how they should do it. . .I would get better results if I got buy-in from the horn players, if I let them use some of their own expertise, some of their own knowledge. And now look, she knows what I don’t know. I don’t actually know what this horn section should do, I barely know what I should really do as a bass player. She knows this, she wants to see me start to use the brains in the rehearsal room to unite for a better sound. She was right. She put me on a better path. But I still wasn’t collaborative enough, I couldn’t loosen up enough. I thought running a band meant yelling.

DeVon Gray is the keyboard player in Heiruspecs. He is spending a lot of time in Rhode Island right now, so he wasn’t at the rehearsal last night, but we’ve had quite the rollercoaster with playing each others music. He was (and is) the stronger player. Now a lot of his life is about composition, but he’s still no joke on a keyboard. He knew great music, he turned me on to great music. He was aloof and at times incredibly demanding as a collaborator in our high school years. I spent a long time in my youth thinking he didn’t think of me as shit as a writer. But he shared with me that when he joined Heiruspecs in our early 20s he was scared to bring his music in. That’s actually a failure on my part as a leader. He should have been welcome, encouraged and excited about bringing his music in. But some basic part of my brain thinks it’s great news that he was scared. . .cause I was scared to bring my shit in to Catfish Blue. I also think that even if everyone is supportive around you, it’s still scary to bring your music out and see what other people make of it. If that doesn’t scare you. . .I don’t know, I just can’t even imagine that.

Now we’re all adults. And not like young adults, we are a band of middle agers. We shouldn’t fuck with each other. We generally don’t. We do this band cause we believe in it. But sharing your music still makes you vulnerable. Josh asked if some of the C#’s in my chart weren’t minor. Naw, they’re all minor, I just fucked up the chart a little Josh. Getting over those things, it’s vulnerable and you want to get to the point where you press record on your iphone, start counting and try the song on. Try a couple random things out, change some things, shout some things out.

The session went well. Got through two of Felix’s beats, two of Josh’s beats, two of mine. My second one was voted “most likely to be a dud” by me so I figured we’d try it when we only had fifteen minutes of practice time left. I’d put a little money on it being a dud just cause the A section sounds like the A section of an acid jazz instrumental from 1993 and the B section sounds the B section of an acid jazz instrumental from 1993. But, we do not sound like an acid jazz band. So there might be a dud in there. But I love the other jam I did and I really love what else was offered up by the other players. There’s less mind games, there’s more shared vision.

Sharing songs can be a crucible of emotion. Especially in those young years in a band. Especially in those years when we don’t exactly know what comfort zone each person is going to operate in. I like that crucible, I learned a lot being in that crucible. And trust me, I’d love to just be a bass player, but it’s not what I have, it not’s what I can do. I don’t need to yell to lead a band, but I’m meant to be the leader, to bring the thing together. It’s one of the things I can do. And I’m finally proud of that and finally don’t have to prove I’m good at it by making my peers feel lesser than.

I Had a Really Good Sunday

Last Sunday as November 19 and though nothing was out of the ordinary, everything was spectacular. We started off with an extra house guest because our 6 year old daughter had her first sleepover. This is a big deal. The big deal is realizing is that I’m sleepover Dad now. I’m no longer sleepover kid. 42 years old. I think the first sleepover was at David Rice’s house in second grade. He was a redhead and a huge fan of the recently created Minnesota Timberwolves. I didn’t live in Minnesota at the time, and I don’t know if maybe David’s extended family did. But he had Timberwolves shit all over the wall, I don’t think they had even played their first game as a franchise yet. But I loved sleepovers. I loved the questions. I loved the vulnerability. I loved the late night stuff. I remember some legendary sleepovers with John Roy and a couple older boys. Those were the sleepovers where if you actually fell asleep everyone made fun of you. It was just a drive to stay awake the whole night, keep the energy going, keep on watching another thing. Listen to the Beastie Boys again. Wrestle. Watch the one funny part of the movie. Wrestle again. It was amazing to see the sleepover culture start for S. I know she is going to have a me approach to sleepovers which is to say positive and enthusiastic and proposing sleepovers all the time with friends way too early in the friendship cycle. My wife is more reserved, loves her friends more than almost anything in the world, but one of the things she does love more is a nice long sleep in her own bed. But I think Sadie thinks of companionship and friendship through more my lens than my wife’s.

I frequently enjoy a cup of coffee and an hour and half of conversation on a Sunday morning. The default is me and Martin Devaney at JS Coffee in St. Paul. The last couple weeks have involved some different configurations and some welcome variety like hanging out with our other dear friend Kevin Hunt. But on Sunday at JS I had a bit of that recharge feeling I really like to get from these Sundays where it’s Martin and it’s JS and it starts at 10:45 and the medium coffee tastes just right and the cup feels perfect in my hand. We are hashing out problems, joys, jokes, memories, reflections. We had some big larger things to talk about, but ultimately we crawled from topic to topic with many a sidebar explored. During the conversation I felt almost out of my own body reflecting on it thinking: “this is good for you, this will bring you back to your family stronger and more ready for a week”. I also got to put up a poster for the Heiruspecs show coming up on December 16. When I am putting up a poster for one of my shows at a coffee shop I am living MY LIFE fantastically on my terms. It’s a good feeling. Not it’s a great feeling.

Me and Rachel do the handoff in the afternoon. She’s been with the kids in the morning and I take them in the afternoon so she can do something that recharges her or gets some schoolwork done. My engineer neighbor Aaron comes over and “helps” me put up hooks in the garage. Aaron basically does it, but gives me a little bit of knowledge about how to get these things hung up. He cares about me developing, as do I, but we are both on a semi-time crunch and he basically just announces all the steps he’s doing and then does them. I also was informed that some super serious folks wax their nails before they drill for best results. I just googled that and all I’m seeing is paraffin wax treatments so maybe he’s fucking with me. But I doubt it. Like always Aaron helps me get some stuff fixed up around my house. Now that that project is completed it’s time for a neighbor to come pick up 6 year old S for a birthday party. That leaves me with three year old N who will always remind me that she would rather be with her momma. N is still deep in momma love. Always wants momma, always wants to be with momma, wants to sit with momma, directly, immediately. When momma isn’t around, she wants to be around S. When S. isn’t around she wants to see some videos. BUT, when all those options are exhausted she does very much love the shit out of me. We spent the afternoon buying Thanksgiving groceries at Kowalski’s, getting some hardwood to give to Aaron who lets us use his sauna sometimes. The whole afternoon is laughs and jokes and HELP! N just wants to help. Grab things, organize things. Ask about things. The world is her oyster and I’m the dude with those little things that crack open the oysters.

Dinner is uneventful while also being awesome but the beautiful coda is getting invited to use the sauna over at the neighbors. It’s becoming a Sunday thing and it’s deep. I hit the sauna in the Y often. Often like twice a week. But this sauna on my block is both hotter and more of an event. It’s frequently with other people but tonight the people of the house had retired so after a quick check in it was me back there. Sauna is very much a mind body experience. And when I put on Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert I know I’m heading in the right direction. The music washes over me, the heat washes over me. The sauna slows my brain down, I feel more connected.I spend about an hour in there on and off and it just gives me what I need. I waltzed into hosting Thanksgiving with a winning attitude cause I got that big recharge on Sunday night. Sundays used to be my most dreaded day of the week, and then I did trivia for 15 years on Sundays and felt great. But there’s some understanding that Sundays can bring some blues. Not today, it was a magical day and the minute we got home from the park I knew this was one for sharing. Legendary.

Harvilla on Soundgarden is a Great One

I love me I hate me some Harvilla. To me he is the David Brooks of the music world. But his last run of episodes has been next level. And the Soundgarden episode is the best one yet. The podcast is called 60 Songs that Explain the 90s. Please listen to the episode. We need to start raving about great podcast episodes cause man there is a spectrum. I’ve listened to some really long useless episodes of things. Let me tell you about the cream. The best ones. This is some of the best it gets. Take your time with it. Don’t expect to take it in one sitting. It’ll be like a long magazine article. You’ll spend a third of a Saturday with it. You’ll get some in the grocery store and some st the Y and plenty of dog walks. This one is magic. Enjoy ir.

For Small Business Saturday - Instrumentals from Big Trouble

What say you to the joys of seeing Big Trouble on Saturday night on the week of Thanksgiving. Not familiar with Big Trouble. We are great. Peter, Josh, Sean and Steve. Instrumentals. 6-8p. Lots of variety of sounds and songs. Great solos, excellent fun. And music from 6-8 on a weekend is really quite the treat.

Creative Mornings - Spreading The Word

In Massachusetts in the 1990s the French language was still a big thing. Everyone took French in elementary school. Thirty minutes at a time a couple days a week we all held a plastic piece of jambon and discussed visiting la bibliotec and l’hopitale. In 1991 when I was in fourth grade the Spin Doctors were also a huge thing. The song, 4:30 was built to annoy adults, but it could also serve to derail a group of French learning etudiants. Innocently I asked professeure how to say “what time is it” in French. The answer is “quelle hor eteil”. I then asked her how to say 4:30 in French. Quator e demi. With that I was armed with enough French to take over the class. For the next le vingt minutes finally, for the first time that year, the class only spoke French. But all we said was quelle hor eteil and quator e demi. Over and over again. She asked us to stop. We refused. I refused. I got the class going. I was overjoyed. I was in charge. And I thought it was bulletproof because it was all in French. The teacher pleaded, she went red in the face. But I went redder. I had the chance to get the class under my control and I would not give it up. After the entire class period had been used, I stood with pure satisfaction. The teacher asked me to stay around after the class left. When the class emptied out she, in her Quebecoise accent, told me that I had a unique power to get to people to do what I wanted them to. She told me that was an incredibly powerful skill. And she told me I had completely wasted it that day. I had used it in a way that could get me in a trouble. That day I didn’t get in trouble, but that teacher let me know that the things I can do can be wasted, or they can be put to better use. I can get everyone to do something cool, or I could get everyone to do something we’d all get in trouble for. During that class I realized what I would do with my life, travel the world with the Spin Doctors.

In St. Paul in the 1990s you went to the Kinkos on Snelling to either purchase or steal your flyers. You brought your files, you picked the canary yellow, the astroblue and you printed your copies. You kept those flyers in the back of your pocket if you were sucker, and you put those flyers in other peoples hands if you did it right. You gave a flyer to the reluctant and you gave a stack of flyers to the enthusiastic, let them spread it further. But if you really did that, and if you could actually play, you got the people to your show. You spread the word and people started checking out what you were doing. I was in a cauldron of talent when I went to St. Paul Central. A bunch of great bands and artists were all around the same program. We all put our flyers up on the wall, talked about who was playing where, what we were going to, what was happening. One day I put up a flyer where I was covered in sand up to my neck. My teacher Red Freeberg caught this and said “this is the best flyer anyone has ever made in the class”. It was not an artistic achievement. Red just stated “people who might not go to the show will want the flyer for the laugh, for the novelty. But some of those folks will go to the show to see more of it”. Flyers were another way for me to communicate the viability of the music I was making. It was another way to call attention to the work we were doing. During that class I realized what I would do with my life, work jobs that involve going to Kinkos all the time.

In St. Paul in the 2010s, a lot of bands didn’t go to FedEx Kinkos as much as they did in the 90s. You have Facebook ads, you have blogs, you have radio stations that at times are supportive of local artists. But, by the 2010s I was the co-owner of a trivia company. I worked for the Current, I still printed posters for Heiruspecs and Trivia Mafia in the year before the pandemic was spending about $900 a month just on copies. I walked in to the Roseville FedEx to pick a small order for Trivia Mafia, maybe 20 sheets for a private party. When I said my name at the front desk the guy got a glassy face of recognition and in awe said “you’re Sean McPherson”? So I had arrogantly say something to the effect “what part of my vast media influence are you a fan of Ted from Kinkos, do you listen to the Current or do you like Heiruspecs? He just said, still in a bit of a daze, “naw man, you just make so many copies”.

My life has been about making the word and then spreading that word. I believe in the shit I am a part of. I believe Heiruspecs is one of the great live acts in Twin Cities history. If I didn’t, why the hell would I still bother to print posters out and put them up at age 42? I believe playing a Trivia Mafia trivia night is one of the most awesome things you can do with your friends. I met my wife at a Trivia Mafia event. I think if you play Trivia Mafia you will meet a great romantic spouse. I believe in this shit thoroughly. I believe I am doing you a favor when I give a flyer. Great radio brings you closer to the music. You should listen to it.

I can’t imagine spreading the word about things I don’t believe in. I have friends in my life who spread the word for the highest bidder. That’s probably what some of you do. Excellent for you. Excellent for them. It’s not for me. Spreading the word is sacred. Spreading the word about something you don’t believe will poison the waters for when you have something you believe in again. And also, spreading the word about things I believe in is part of my brand. I’m the flyer guy, I’m the event guy, I’m the person who used his network to start filling 15 bars with trivia. That network was the seeds of a company that now provides trivia to over 160 locations. If you have something worthwhile to spread, you are doing a disservice to not spread it. I understand that art is selfish, I’ve been indoctrinated with that statement for 30 years. But aren’t you glad Erykah Badu connected with a manager and became a household name? Don’t you think it’s wonderful that Jeopardy is on the air? Life is hard. Great art and entertainment make it better. If your work is legitimately good what are you doing not trying to share it?

Spreading the word is not about brute strength. It’s not about putting up a million posters that will get torn down. It’s about sensing somehow that a flyer at Caffrey’s and the CC Club will yield you more eyeballs than all of the U of M spots that are already plastered with “UPS is hiring” posters anyway. Spreading the word is not about going red in the face yelling “quelle hor eteil?” It is about getting Pizza Luce to agree to giveaway a Heiruspecs promotional CD announcing your upcoming release show with all pizza deliveries for two months. You figure out what you can do, that others can’t or won’t, that will help you do what you love. I love spreading the word.

In the year 2000 in Minneapolis press releases were a thing but I sure didn’t know about that yet. I knew about booking shows and making flyers. I was interning for a woman named Kim Randall who ran a label called No Alternative from town that had artists like American Paint, The Love-Cars and Happy Apple on the rosterer. While helping Kim Randall for almost full-time hours for a winter study I ended up telling Kim that my band was releasing an album like so many interns had told their bosses for time immemoriam. I told her the album was coming out at the end of the month with a show at the Foxfire Coffee Lounge. She asked if I had sent out a press release and I told her I did not know what she was talking about. She showed me a press release. She told me how to find everyones names. She told me where I could find the huge weird 24 hour mailboxes at City Pages and the Star Tribune. I put the press release in and suddenly we got on the radar. Within a year the lady who was music editor at the Star Tribune said I was one of the most reliable publicists in the Twin Cities music scene and she said that would help me get good coverage. NO SHIT. This one kernel of info let me soak up mountains of press because I was ahead of my peers in knowing about issuing press releases.

You need to build an advantage in to distinguish yourself, to create differentiation between you and your peers. When everyone in your scene starts making flyers, you better have the best looking ones. The cream rises to the top, but if you’re the cream, you can’t just wait for it to rise. You better push the cream up and try to find that top. When everyone writes press releases, yours need to come early, with the best quotes and the most insightful strategy. But more importantly, when you’re in a scene, help your competition make flyers, help them write press releases. They have skills you don’t have. You share, they share. Announce your advantages, exploit your advantages, but don’t be stingy with sharing your skills. Ultimately the distinction is always the word, not the spreading. I’m here acting all cool not because of the spreading, but because of the word.

If Trivia Mafia sucked, no amount of facebook invites could change that. If the rappers in Heiruspecs couldn’t rap, or if the band didn’t make great music, we’d just’ve been a weird CD on your pizza in 2008. But the word is good. And there’s no trick to making the work good. There’s no angle to exploit. There’s no workaround. But if you don’t feel like telling your friends about your thing, or more importantly if your friends don’t feel like telling their friends about your thing, something is wrong with the word. And no spreading can fix that. Fix the work, spread the word.

—-

Do you know what a stage plot is? It’s a graphic representation of what a band is going to place on stage and what they need from the sound person to put on a good performance. But in it’s rawest sense it’s a shorthand way of saying “this group is serious”. Long before you have a tour manager, or your own sound person, you have a piece of paper that you can walk up to the house sound person with. Both with Heiruspecs and with Dessa, before we even finish unloading I’m offering the sound person this piece of paper. I’m getting their name. I’m seeing if they need an extra copy. I’m asking if they have questions. I text their name to everyone else in the band. That way two hours later when Dessa isn’t getting what she needs in the monitor she can say “Morgan, I need more of my vocals”. It’s a way to command respect early on in a relationship. Every industry has its stage plot. You don’t skip this. It demands a respect that not everyone great musicianship will confer upon you.

A very talented rapper from town, Mally, paid me an amazing compliment some years ago. He said that I took Heiruspecs’ work so seriously that no one else in our circle could do otherwise. That compliment touched me. Do you know how often artists, particularly local artists, are simply shocked that when they come in for an interview at Jazz88 I’ve listened to the music, I’ve prepared the questions and I’ve treated them with respect. Given them good directions to the studio. Tell em where to park. Offer them water when they come in. This is basic 101 stuff. But it establishes the right precedent. If I take the artist seriously, they’ll take the station seriously. If I treat the music with respect, they’ll treat the platform with respect.

Are you familiar with the marginally fancy word incredulous. It’s one of those words I understand but rarely use. But I’ve spent plenty of time being incredulous at events like CreativeMornings that they weren’t booking me right out the gate. Look at this guy! Radio host, spectacular trivia company, amazing work as a musician. Are you familiar with the 100% fancy word incredulity? Some of my incredulity wasn’t just pure arrogance, it was that ever important sense that I had given the Twin Cities scene my stage plot. I had told them in many ways for many years that I was serious with mine. I put out great records. I had great ways to promote them. I helped launch a spectacular entertainment company. I snuck in through the backdoor of morning trivia on the Current and parlayed that into becoming a full-time radio host and music director for a one of the best rated jazz stations in the country. But I can’t yell my way on to the CreativeMornings stages. Are you familiar with the fully made up word incredule? I can’t incredule my way on to this stage. All I can do is hand everyone my stage plot. All I can do is prep for every interview. All I can do is try to make the next song better than the last one.

I find that drive to do just that internally and externally. I let myself get my ass kicked and turn that into fuel to be stronger myself. When I slid into filling in on the morning shows alongside Jill Riley, I was pretty useless as a co-host. I had strong verbal skills, I knew music, I could crack a good joke. But I was very light on fundamentals and I was wildly nervous. One of the jobs I was given early on was to read the news on the :20. I would work as hard as I understood I could at the time to make that news break great. It was wildly far from great, with profound omissions, misattributions and sloppy copy. But worse than that I was so stressed about it that at 6:12 in the morning Jill would simply say “how you doing this morning Sean” and I would bust in with “Just peachy Jill. Reports coming out of Washington point to a recalibration of the question of illegal immigration”. Jill would let me run down the whole newscast, get back in to the music and then simply state “you did the news early, not a big deal, there’s just 180,000 people who think they are late for work now”. I saw in her a tireless professional, someone who did it right when no one was looking, who did it right when everyone was looking, and who made it right on the rare times when she did get something wrong. It was a level of professionalism I thought was unattainable. Are you familiar with the kind of weird word strove?I strove my ass off to handle mine like Jill handled hers. I saw how she had an unbelievable array of dates linked to artists we were playing locked up in her noggin that she could drop on the spot when we played the song. I went to check if she had a cheat sheet, a little set of notes. When she caught me looking she just pointed to her brain. The stroving continued. Got to get that sharp, got to get that quick. Got to get the guidance. I brought a more disciplined view to my development in radio than I did in music. Part of that is straight up age. But part of that is also just having made the mistakes with Heiruspecs and not wanting to make those mistakes again. Heiruspecs got relatively successful relatively quickly. I was hitting the road on tours I booked that were breaking even by age 21. We were on the road opening for Fishbone when I was 22. Signed to a label when I was 23. Opening for Cake when I was 24. How could I need to practice bass? We were opening for Cake! What’s a mixolydian scale for, I’m opening for Cake. I was incredulous. We were hot shit and I was lacing up my shoes for a victory lap before looking at a lot of things that were shaky under the hood. I didn’t know how to read music, there was a sophistication of rhythmic patterns that eluded me. I wrote what was comfortable to play with my limited vocabulary. I maximized results in those zones, but I didn’t expand my vocabulary. I avoided situations that would expose my shortcomings on the instrument and my shortcomings as a writer. I curated my career to highlight the things I was great at. Those gaps in my skillset limited what I could offer Heiruspecs and severely limited what I could be used for outside of Heiruspecs. I have made no such mistakes in radio. I have made completely new, completely unique mistakes. But I’ve practiced the things I’ve sucked at. I’ve taken the opportunities that I know will expose my shortcomings. I’ve ignored my successes to soberly look at my weak spots. I am going to lean on my strengths, but I am not going to limp past my shortcomings, I look at them head on, address them and improve my skillset.

My incredulity about not doing CreativeMornings faded away pretty quickly after Drew asked me to speak for this event. I am pretty comfortable doing my “here’s the cool shit I’ve done and here’s some cool ways I’ve done it” stump speech to a group of music students at Augsburg, I’m pretty comfortable speaking to a group of young aspiring anythings and giving out some legit kernels of wisdom. But, for this audience, you’ve covered a lot of that territory in your life already. You’re more likely to dole out that advice than to need to hear it. You’re here to get the extra sauce and I’ve spent a bit of this week of preparation feeling ill-suited to give my extra sauce out. This is not because my sauce is proprietary. It is because I struggled for some time to articulate what my suace is. My sauce at times can feel industry specific, music specific, radio specific. My sauce can feel insufficient. What do all you fancys sitting at Dogwood Coffee with the new kind of Apple charger in the $390 sweater want with my sauce? Many of you make more money than me. Many of you have stronger work ethics than me. Many of you probably have stronger stage plot game than me. But I have some sauce for you that I think will stick. I think this sauce will help you. I don’t want to waste your time. I’m not wasting your time.

Make work that you believe deserves the utmost respect professionally. Make work that you can press play on with no preface. Make work where you don’t have to say “we didn’t get the coloring quite perfect on it, but you’ll see what it’s supposed to be”. Make work that requires no preface for respect. Spread the word about that work with a contagious pride and reverence for the beautiful work you have just made. Be an ambassador for that work day in and day out in a way out that demands respect for the package. Some people will not like your work, but do the ambassadorial work to show them that you take it seriously, that you have presented it with authority and with enthusiasm. Make sure that those that don’t like your work have been given no excuses to also shit on how you package it, how you present it, how you yourself represent it.

Don’t let the success of your work dilute the weak links you know you have. A weak link is just that no matter how strong the other pieces are. Sharpen your skills at every opportunity. And when you happen to come up short of that credo, to not sharpen something you could have, fix it without guilt. Improve yourself and represent yourself without excuses, without asterisks, without drama.

Heiruspecs Holiday Classic

The Heiruspecs Holiday Classic is Saturday December 16. We are with Dosh, Lady Lark and DJ Eddie Sizza Hans. Grab some tickets and let’s have some fun before 2024.

Words that Let Me Know You Aren’t Really From Saint Paul

If you struggle to pronounce these words correctly you aren’t really from Saint Paul:

Hamline
Iglehart
Ayd Mill Road
Aldine
Pascal
Edgecumbe

Happy Birthday to Pavielle

I want to send a birthday shout out to Pavielle. There’s a good chance if you are reading this blog you know who Pavielle is. She has been a part of the Twin Cities music scene for years and for as long I’ve known her I’ve recognized her as one of the real talents our cities have to offer. She has made masterful albums, put on incredible shows and broken boundaries in collaborations with artists and with arts institutions. I had the honor of interviewing her at the Current a couple of times and we’ve shared bills a couple of times. (Once, there was a TPT supported show at Vieux Carre and she “opened” for Heiruspecs, blew us off the stage and I believe won an Emmy for her efforts, here’s her episode). Lately, we’ve been brushing shoulders a lot more because she does a show on Fridays on Jazz88 from 9-11pm (she uses the nom de plume Lady Luca but’s its the Pavielle vibe through and through). Today is her birthday, she’s a Scorpio, I can’t wait to listen the show tonight. You can listen here during the show or afterwards on-demand. She’s releasing some new music and new visuals today and she asked her friends to share online. She didn’t ask us to say anything nice about her with the posting but I’m going to do that too.

A lot of people who feel a lot about music don’t necessarily excel at knowing the “liner notes” side of the music. They can emote, but they can’t rattle off the engineer on a record or which orchestra did the strings on the remix. In the vice-versa column: a lot of people who know liner notes inside and out can’t actually share a feeling about the music. They can tell you what gauge strings the guitar player was using, but they can’t write/say/share something that brings you deeper inside the music in a soulful way. Pavielle can do both and it’s stunning. I remember riding the elevator with Pavielle years ago and she rattled off some relatively deep information about Johnny Otis. Did I know who Johnny Otis was? Yes. Did I know who Shuggie Otis was? Yes. Did I know Johnny was Shuggie’s daddy? No. Did I know Johnny played key roles in the development of r&b? Absolutely not. Did Pavielle? Yes. But she gave me that knowledge with the spirit of someone who just wanted people to know the stories, to dive deeper and come back with stories of their own.

In her almost year doing a show at Jazz88, our conversations haven’t been exclusively about music. We talk radio, we talk St. Paul, we talk life, we talk race, we talk relationships, we talk business and of course we just talk. During that time I’ve learned that Pavielle is a north star. She’s principled, she’s passionate and she cares about how she shows up in the world. She has strong ethics which is a rarity period and even in shorter supply in many corners of the music world. And the two most inspiring things to me I’ve learned about Pavielle this year:

• She has humble, hungry ears. She listens to an incredible amount of blues music to offer up a great program on Jazz88 and that effort is clear in every episode. If I knew as much as Pavielle did, I might think I didn’t need to learn much more. But she’s not wired that way.

• She cares for the world and takes self-care seriously. When she needs it, she takes a week off, when she needs it, she does something to take care of herself and hit the reset button. She vacations, she enjoys awesome food. She lives her life right. I think this actually amplifies her ability to care for others. I admire it.

I didn’t learn it this year, I already knew it, but Pavielle is a pioneer in the music scene here in the Twin Cities. She has undertaken ambitious projects and has handled the details to make sure they are presented the way she wants them to be. She has done this in a scene that is often content to play it safe, to make the safe play, to repackage the old and keep on working the same circuit. It’s something to see and I’m proud to share some of that work now. Here’s a piece of the Sovereign Suite visuals that she just released today. Give it a look and thank your lucky stars you share a city with Pavielle.

A Quick Dispatch

Tomorrow Ela plays at the White Squirrel. A band I joined I think in early 2002, a band that struck “gold” quick. A small label in New York liked us. We got good looks. We went on tours, we played shows. We had some people who really liked what we did. I think we were an awesome rock band.

And we get that back together on Saturday at White Squirrel. 6pm for Rob Skoro, 7pm for us. I hope you can make it out. It’s free. Watch a video about it.

Don’t Worry Jim Jordan, The Same Thing Happened to Heiruspecs in Omaha

What do you know about an off night Jim Jordan? Sometimes things just keep on going in the wrong direction. Across the last seven days you’ve asked your fellow members of the House to consider you as a Speaker, and every vote, less people have voted for Jim Jordan. What is happening is that as people get to know you better, they like you worse. Don’t worry, I can’t help you, but I can comfort you.

I’m in a band called Heiruspecs, I’m sure you’ve heard of us. We were trying to make a go of it nationally in the early 2000s and making a go of it means going to Omaha. And listen Jim Jordan, every time we went to Omaha, less and less people liked us. We played the Sokol Underground in 2002. Probably about 135 paid. Wowza, Jim. You won more votes than that every time you ran a vote like this. But it bodes well. We rocked it Jimbo. If just 15% of those folks bring three of their friends we are cracking 200 paid easy baby. Two hotel rooms tonight boys, Omaha is on our side! But Jim it gets worse. When there were 135 paid, we were playing with a lot of other great artists. But Jim Jordan, we came back on our fucking own and there was probably 150 paid. Wowza, Jim. 150 paid, in Omaha. We had a great time. We drove past Warren Buffet’s house. It was a thing. Not 200, but building. Can you feel the momentum Jim? Lick your finger, put it in the air. The winds of change are blowing towards Heiruspecs Island. Maybe bout a year later we came back. 105 paid. All good Jim Jordan! Shake it off. Rainy night. Promoter said everybody had to go see Conor Oberest who was back in town to see someone play and Omaha would rather watch Conor Oberest watch a show than watch us play a show. Water under the bridge, Jim Jordan. Shit happens. Conor Oberest happens. Cool, another eight months go by. Time to make that long not strange trip to Omaha. 75 paid. What the shit Jim Jordan? Not to worry, Jimmy baby. It’s all good. New venue. Folks got to get used to it. The local opener didn’t invite anyone. Don’t worry Jim, we got this. Omaha is ours baby.!150 paid just a couple years ago. Remember that Jimmy? We got this. Next time . . . . . .? I don’t know Jim, but it wasn’t good. I’m gonna say 50 people. I remember two bartenders fighting over who would get to sell me a drink cause they were bored out of their mind Jim. Omaha doesn’t love Heiruspecs. Sure, we got one guy on Facebook who likes us. And if everyone of his fingers and toes bought tickets we still aren’t breaking even in Omaha. And Jimmy Jim Jordy Jordz, the House of Representatives is to you as Omaha is to Heiruspecs. It’s over baby.

Maybe We Are Bowling Alone Cause Our Kids Are Playing League Soccer in Andover

I’m very into podcasts. Spent a while being very into The Ezra Klein Show, Plain English with Derek Thompson and The Grey Area with Sean Illing. I still listen to at least one podcast from that trio a week. And a lot of the observations are about the benefits of social gatherings. I listen to these observations with comfort. I hear of the loneliness epidemic and it breaks my heart but it doesn’t resonate with my life. I have a uniquely positive relationship with about 20 people on my block, couples, kids. We have routine activities. We have gone out of town together. I can share difficult things and get useful help and tangible empathy from many of them. Bands are a unique source of togetherness. Playing gigs, rehearsing. I think one of the reasons the pandemic was hard on my work in Heiruspecs was how the shitty, solitary parts of being the manager of a band remained exactly the same level of shittiness and the good parts of being in a band basically completely disappeared. Suffice it to say, loneliness is a rough shake for a lot of people in our society. But even for people who are not suffering from abject loneliness, they are spending less time with friends than we were a generation ago. There is less membership in civic groups, less engagement in Church et cetera. I want to talk about that variety and strain of loneliness. And what I haven’t heard connected yet is if it a never ending cycle of parents who were over-scheduled and over-parented engineering an even more scheduled life for their children and then when the children grow up they seek out a similar level of intensity for their kids. I know a handful of people who do massive amounts of demanding shit with their kid/s on the regular. Largely sports, but not exclusively. You do everything you can for your kids. It’s the adage, it’s frequently the reality. But what do YOU lose when you do everything for your kid, parent? And perhaps, what does your kid lose when they can do everything? It’s an arms race of busyness. I read about the meritocracy. Or more accurately about the falsities and the hopelessness of the meritocracy. I read about the meritocracy trap depriving young people of free play. But I think this is impacting the parent’s too.

I struggle mightily with making sense with the good and bad of my childhood. Plenty of good, but the good is boring. It doesn’t roll around my head like the bad does. I had a bunch of time to myself, a bunch of skills/knowledge that seem to get passed down as a birthright from one generation to the next wasn’t passed down to me. I learned amazing things learning on my own. But I didn’t learn to swim until late like maybe second/third grade. I didn’t learn to ride a bike until sixth grade. The whole affair seemed very ala carte. And part of me liked that, but also, it’s all I knew. I look back and long for some more structure. But I am comfortable being bored, I am comfortable engineering an evening of events I believe I will enjoy, I am comfortable getting my own affairs in order socially. I find these skills immensely helpful. Do I wish I had been strong armed into Little League cause most kids were doing it? Yes, I do. I don’t think I should’ve have that much of a choice in it to be honest. I don’t know. For some reason I went to the try-outs, but I didn’t try-out. I can’t remember all of that one, it’s so vague. . .I think a lot about Little League for someone who never played it.

But, a lot of what I hear about parents from previous generations just seems generally more adult-centric. Dinner groups, rotary meetings, Church groups, longer visits with friends that had nothing to do with kids. Maybe this is the way I see it because this is the way I want it, now that I’m a dad. I envision these quiet, compliant children in the 70s who were allowed to roam the neighborhood with zero observation. I envision parents living fuller lives as individuals, and the children living fuller lives as individuals and I imagine more happiness. It’s a fiction, but I think there’s something to it. When there is no limiting factor on what activities your kid can do if the activities they choose are generally agreed upon to be positive, what gives the parents the breathing room they deserve to craft their life to. When you as the parents have let your friend group atrophy, can you refill your cup to give your children what they actually need, which is a complete person for a parent. I understand though I question the fear side of the equation. The abductions, the violations, the horrors prompting parents to maintain a level of control previous generations hadn’t considered. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. I reject that as a whole story. I think we say yes to activities to kids, and the internet has made the buffet of activities overly sized. So on a note when you could be with your friends, you are at a league soccer post-season game for the bronze medal. It’s commendable, it’s likely fun to be at the soccer, perhaps you even build a rapport with your fellow parents. But does that rapport go deep like it does with your chosen friends? Does that rapport fill up your cup? Does that rapport challenge you? Maybe we need a recalibration with a lot of room built in for “jack shit” “playing grabass”. I fear we have sucked every inefficiency out of life, the texts roll in like clockwork, the kid is picked up if the sleepover is bad, you can watch the games online, there are snacks for sale. I want less certainty. I want more slack. I want more parent-centric gatherings. I want to be absent for some of my kids firsts, I want them to find their own way to things from time to time. I don’t want to go to Andover. I don’t think she needs to do league soccer.

The Greatest Rock Band I’ve Ever Been In Is Getting Back Together

NOTE: I think I’ve really only been in one rock band since turning 18 so this is a relatively non controversial statement. But I am really proud of the work I did with Ela. For the majority of the Ela run we were a trio with Peter Leggett on drums, me on bass and leader/writer/heartbeat Bill Caperton on guitar and vocals. It was a rewarding run with Ela but my loyalty was always with Heiruspecs. Heiruspecs was my passion and it was something I felt uniquely qualified to guide whereas I felt like a very important but ultimately replaceable part of the Ela stew. But, that doesn’t take away from the fact that I feel the music we made was really special. The album “Stapled to Air” is an amazing document of the time we spent together as a band. Although we recently played one Ela song with Big Trouble, we are going to go full on reunion on October 28 at The White Squirrel. Rob Skoro is opening and he’s definitely the fifth member of Ela (the fourth member of Ela is Knol Tate who engineered our first record and then joined the band for our second effort). 2003 is back and it’s spectacular baby.

Bill made two flyers so I’m posting them both. And look how cute I am in flyer number one. What a great chapter in my life.

The 20 Most Influential Musicians of the 20th Century

I confidently said that George Clinton was in the Top 20 Most Influential Musicians of the 20th Century. I’m sure that’s correct but I’m going to check my work and make a list of twenty. Not listed in an order. NO GROUPS. This has to be individuals. Some of them will represent groups. But I’m using the individuals. Also, I’m not looking at other internet lists while I make this so I will no doubt have huge gaps and spots I missed.

Robert Johnson - the blues happened before Robert Johnson, but blues doesn’t happen the way it does with Robert Johnson and those recording sessions in San Antonio in 1936 are still perhaps the most important things committed to tape in music history.
Carole King - If she had just been a writer she could still be on this list. But she opened a new lane for singer songwriters with Tapestry.
Prince - Obviously. But also, he saw how someone could transcend pop stardom better than maybe anyone else, ever.
Duke Ellington - The greatest jazz composer of all time.
Chuck Berry - If you like great lyrics over distorted guitar raise a glass to a very complicated man, Chuck Berry.
James Brown - I can’t find a truly compelling path to the sound of funk that doesn’t pass through Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag. Sometimes there’s innovations that were bound to happen, it was just a matter of time. The feel of funk is not one such thing. I think without James Brown’s contributions funk might not come to be.
Bob Dylan - He opened the possibilities of what a songwriter could do up. He made it possible to have a unique and in some ways undesirable voice and still have the only voice some people care about.
George Clinton - The sonics of popular black music from 1975-2015 can mostly be found inside of the work of George Clinton. Obviously, he wasn’t an island creating all the sounds, but when you hear a synthesizer doing the heavy lifting on a bassline OR a high register synth. . .it’s his curation. So that might get you there period, but check this out, his relationship with black futurism, with sexual desire, with cocky braggadocio shit. His finger prints are all over culture.
Kurt Cobain - He changed rock so much it’s easy to forget he changed it. But he offered a pretty unique way to be a rock star, a voice of a generation, an icon. And he made people who hate guitar stores want to play guitars. He made room for a lot of people in the rock world.
Mahalia Jackson - It’s somewhat rare for a genre’s ambassador to also be the most compelling and talented artist from said genre. But to my ears there’s something in Mahalia Jackson’s voice and presentation that isn’t matched by anyone, anywhere, singing anything.
Woody Guthrie - I’m not going to act like a dial up Woody Guthrie all the time and give it a spin. But I am under the clear impression that Woody Guthrie was a speak truth to power all star and that shit was wildly important for this century of music.
Miles Davis - If you change the course of music three times you get on this list. So Miles is on this list.
Rakim - Nobody raps like they do today if Rakim didn’t rap like he did. He changed rap music once, but he changed it at such a molecular level. He made it possible for rap to be an art without making it hoity-toity or somehow academic, he just laid out some new levels of expression and of technical facility.
Stravinsky - Playing it safe here. Anytime I read about classical music in the 20th I hear about Stravinsky and I hear about Schoenberg. And I really struggle personally with Schoenberg’s music, so I can confirm I think Stravinsky wrote some amazing things.
Louis Armstrong - Not only an icon, but someone who recalibrated jazz players via early recording and pointed towards solos that highlight one individual at a time.
Ornette Coleman - I don’t think that “someone” was going to come up with what Ornette Coleman came up with. Unless maybe Charlie Haden was going to. But mostly, I believe Ornette Coleman heard a path in music that we might never have gotten to if we hadn’t heard it. That’s so wild.
Bob Marley - A courageous ambassador who cultivated world wide passion for a formerly under-celebrated music.
Aretha Franklin - She’s on the list cause she’s the best. When she sings, you wonder why others bother to. Her majesty as a vocalist is unmatched, not a hot take.
Chuck D - It’s not just his voice. He was a part of the bomb squad. The Bomb Squad is the most compelling collage music peddled to the mainstream. So take that influence and add on one of the greatest voices in the history of music.
Garth Brooks - The modern Bing Crosby. There’s whole formats, venues, radio stations that don’t stand up without the power of Garth Brooks. And I think he sold more records than all of them.

The Biggest Thing For Me Is That I Thought We Would Talk More

Sitting at my desk today at Jazz88 I got one of those short washes of regret. Not a thorough wash, not a painful wash. But some nostalgia, mixing with some kind of uneasy mood and together it ends up being something describable. I’m forty two years old and day by day, year by year, the things that felt infinite are all slowly and at the same time feeling finite. And one of those things is conversation. I just imagined the talking never stopping. Before kids, but say after age 17, there was just this surplus of conversation. If you had asked me twenty years ago how many nights I would spend talking about music, politics, women, racism, great food, movies I think my truest heart would’ve envisioned the number north of 10,000. It just seemed so commonplace to talk for hours, to dissect a different thing, with a different group of friends. My ex-girlfriend turned friend Anna to me seemed like this unending font of conversation and of wisdom. I thought we were going to get to it all. Now I count her among my close friends and I probably get six proper conversations with her on a good year. Now of course some of that is because we aren’t partners. She’s got her wife, I got mine. But we hang pretty often. But we often have our kids. And we have the dynamics of our partners. Conversations are now interrupted not because they ran their course, but because the babysitter can only go until 10:30 on school nights, or because “she naps better if the car is moving”. I get it. But I hate it. I miss it and I don’t know if everyone misses it like me. I love conversation. I have a relatively free flowing conversation every Sunday with my best friend Martin. We are talking one and half hours to two. Sure, sometimes there’s more left to say, but generally we got to “it”. I’m in a season. I’m in a season where my ears don’t belong to me. They belong to my children, they belong to my job, they belong to my rest. It’s an uphill battle to find a conversation. It’s also hard to conduct the type of conversation I want exclusively with my wife. If me and Rachel are going to talk we will of course have to stumble into all the mundanity that surrounds our life. Things will naturally drift to our children, to our schedule, to our needs. It’s just part of the deal. Make any rule you want, you might delay it, but you’ll still fall into the conversations that need to be had, not the ones that want to be had.

This is what I love about listening to the conversation based podcasts I go hard on. And I don’t mean interview based podcasts. I mean conversation based podcasts. Easy top 4: Juan Ep is Life, The Political Gabfest, The Rewatchables, Bill Simmons when it’s with Ryen Rusillo. May I take an aside?

It’s Bill Caperton’s birthday. Gold medal conversationalist. Wide, and deep and so curious when he does find something he doesn’t know about. Hilarious but never cracks a joke. A straight man with one of those unassailable controls of the creativity of the English language. A man who coined the term “bum son” for the feeling of doing something vaguely juvenile or immature while in the blaring presence of more traditional adulthood. For example: Lifting weights in the middle of the day at your parents house because you are just working as a touring musician at the time. Enjoying two beers on a back porch at an uexplainably early hour. He’s a man who used to say “grit me” when it was time to smoke a cigarette. He has opinions about Neutral Milk Hotel records that were only released in Denmark on 8 inch acetates. He will read a poem with a conviction that is startling and heartfelt. Seeing him love a song is better than listening to the song alone. You go back and look up the artist after the hang is done, it’s good, but not the same. Aside Aside: Have you listened to this song that is super not well-known but matters so much to me and Muad’dib?

<p>Hello, Have a Listen You Coward!</p>

Back to podcasts and the importance of conversation: These podcasts capture some of the vulnerability and free association that went into the conversations I had back then. There’s a thesis, there’s a centerpiece, but there’s something else. There’s where the conversation because of the exact people who are having the talk. It’s not a regurgitation of Wikipedia. It’s not as formulaic as an honest to goodness interview show. This is something that is shared with a handful of personalities negotiating how they move together. I believe this will be the kryptonite for the AI folks. Will I listen to an AI be Drake. . .maybe but probably not. . . . . .Will I listen to AI Marc Maron? Absolutely not. These podcasts demonstrate a growth that is absolutely not exponential. It’s incremental. I need to hear their life move at a similar pace to mine. Or at least a comparable one. I feel some sort of connection to Bomani Jones because on his personal podcast he compellingly makes his P1 listeners feel like they are the journey with him. I love Juan Ep is Life because the hosts are honest about their travails, their jealousies, their neuroses. They show their bruises, they involve their failures, they critique their own relationship with their appetite for fame. It’s not raw, it’s presented, but the artifice is light.
It is something deeply important to me to get these types of conversations in my life, and I’m not getting the mental real estate from the random stuff I used to read before I had an iphone. One of the huge shortcomings of the contours of my consumption patterns now is my access to written content that isn’t about politics. The era of music magazines, and just fuck around graffiti mags and all sort of random periodicals you read because it’s all you could at the time, they weren’t fully immersive. If you gave me a magazine of yours to read in the early 2000s you weren’t saying “put down that sandwich and watch this clip right now”, you were saying “see what part of this works for you”. There was an exploratory nature to my reading that I just don’t have. I read shit I had no interest in. I remember thumbing through magazines and thinking “this article looks stupid” and then reading the whole thing. It forced a breadth of knowledge that I can pretty easily avoid. I’m aware of the most recent meme things, I’ve read the three big articles that everyone is supposed to read this month, but I haven’t learned about a butterfly collector in Florida that is suing a pet store for using a photo of one of his butterflies. Back in 2005, I’m reading that. No questions asked. And reading with very low expectations.
I look forward to getting some of this back. Because a lot of it is is not the presence of children, it’s the age of those children. I remember having amazing conversations of this nature with my parents and my parents friends. I also now realize, my parents were getting these long conversations in with their friends and me and the rest of the kids were just running a whole separate fair conversationally. I dream about being 67, semi-retired, having a talk, discussing a couple movies with a couple people, some close friends, some friends of friends. You’re talking, you’re laughing, you’re sharing experiences, you’re sharing common thread cultural experiences even if you didn’t experience them with these people. It’s special. It’s coming back. It will be finite. You’ll be interrupted by other things. But the gift of gab will be back, it will be different, and I’m getting these podcasts in in the meantime.