Pistachio Muffins Who What Where When Can You Have One
The greatest muffin in the history of muffins is a pistachio muffin. This is a small time muffin. I would wager there are probably 500 blueberry muffins for every one pistachio muffin. But, the joy of a pistachio muffin is unparalleled. It’s green, that’s cool. Also, I think the pistachio makes the whole affair a bit oily. I’ve never had a dry pistachio muffin and I’ve bet you’ve never had one at all. They used to have them at the Minnesota Historical Society. And I used to live across the street from the Minnesota Historical Society. And I used to eat those muffins and love it. Then they switched caterers and they lost it. A good option, but clearly a second best is the pistachio muffins from most Dunn Bros. Pretty good, not as oily and not as break-off-able-into-aesthetically-pleasing chunks able. But, I randomly came across a world class pistachio muffin. I say its random, but actually I needed a serious bit of good energy in my life that day and I think that’s why the universe but a pistachio muffin in front of me. If you drive from North High to the new temporary studios for Jazz88 you’ll drive right past Bryn Mawr. There are only two neighborhoods in the Twin Cities that make me think of specific people. If I drive past the Marcy area of Minneapolis right near Northeast I think about an ex-girlfriend that lived over there and I only think of her. And if I drive past that intersection of Penn and Cedar Lake Rd. with the Mobil I only think of Alexei Casselle from Oddjobs, Kill the Vultures et cetera. His mom used to live over there and it was the only time I went to said neighborhood. But there’s a little coffee shop over there that I’ve ever been to but I parked to grab a quick coffee. When I saw the pistachio muffin I knew it was on. I exerted the self-control necessary to not eat it in the car and come into the new offices looking like a leprechaun had dry heaved on my hoodie. But the minute I got to my new desk I went to town on captain pistach and my god was it good. GO TO CUPPA JAVA AND GET A PISTACHIO MUFFIN. See? Reading this is as fun as twitter isn’t it?
Rest in Peace to Mimi Parker and How Sean Got Her Groove Back and I’m Pro Choice
You may have heard the news but the amazing Mimi Parker from Low has passed away. My friend Martin Devaney told me the news this morning at our coffee hang. For about four years Heiruspecs shared a manager with Low and the entire time I felt so absolutely amazing to be sharing any sort of relationship with this band I’ve always admired. As Martin and I both realized, Low is one of the few bands that have been an absolute constant in our musical life. I have always had profound respect for Low, both musically and for how they run their business. And somehow, running their business is exactly the right term to me. They were a critically acclaimed mom + pop show that delivered uncompromising music and experiences for their listeners. They were the band that from note one to the last chord they played, they interrupted and exceeded expectations. I was never close personally to anyone in Low, a couple backstage hellos with Al and even fewer with Mimi, but from a far I felt there was a mutual respect for what my group’s were up to and what they were up to. Obviously in regards to significance, they eclipsed what my bands have been up to, but I felt respected and supported. And like everyone who ever heard them, I knew the key to the recipe was the way Mimi and Al sang together. I have no idea if their harmonic relationship was intuitive, but it sure sounded intuitive by the time it got to me. Mimi spent her life on the road while also raising kids and bringing her amazing energy and sound to people around the world. It is a life well lived and I am honored to have shared some stages with her in my career. Rest in peace to Mim and love to her family.
I’ve been off energy wise for a couple weeks. Stressful times at the day job, stressful times at home. Largely these stresses are temporary, remodels and moves being the primary culprit at work and at home. But your body doesn’t necessarily know that these things are temporary. Your body just knows about the stress. And, though those were the big stressors, I had plenty of small super difficult things that kept on popping up week after week. Somehow, between yesterday and today I got some energy moving in the right direction. I worked so hard on Friday and utilized a tremendously diverse set of skills to manage a bunch of technical breakdowns at the job that I believe I was just exhausted beyond comprehension on Saturday morning. Thankfully, Saturday was a slow and social day with generally positive energy the whole time. I got enough sleep on Saturday night and I was able to get in and exercise today and visit with my friend Martin. This all set me in the right place, I’m in a better place and I can feel it in every second of my existence. I just feel a little more planted. I’m glad for that because the rest of this year is going to be an ass kicker. Heiruspecs is releasing a record, it’s Hannukah, it’s my first time doing holiday music as a music director. There’s going to be a lot coming my way, so I’m really glad to be on a good spot. And I’ve been centered today, not a lot of time wasted thumbing through the internet.
I hope you vote on or before Tuesday. I’m a pro-choice human being and I got the opportunity to use my silky voice for a pro-choice campaign aimed at dad’s.
Vote, and listen to jazz, and get enough sleep.
Two a days
I hated Twitter in 2010 or more accurately was neutral about it. I didn’t get it and didn’t get how to interact on it. I was playing bass for dessa at the time and she said I should just go on there twice a day and say something, it could be a help for my career. I did it and I fell in love with it. I found out that a lot of my most exciting friends were on there. I had fun conversations.
now I love Twitter. It’s the one social media that I felt a personal draw to. It’s the one that I liked playing on. But they’re firing a lot of the people that I think made it great and also, a lot of the people are caring about are leaving the site.
I know a broadcast blog is very different than Twitter but I’m gonna try to hit this twice a day and see if it can scratch an itch that right now I only get from Twitter.
3:33⅓ - The Giants of Jazz
I can’t say much about this record yet, I only know the tracks I’ve played on the radio. But on this one, “Everything Happens to Me” I get more of an idea why everyone is so gah gah about Sonny Stitt. There’s something really muscular and emotional about his playing, and that’s a hard combination to push out of a saxophone.
Otis Spann album cover.
History Won’t be Written by the Winners
When they said history is written by the winners that was before podcasts. This is a beautiful thing, the platforms might be of a different size, but committing stories to the record is no longer the sole domain of the dominant player in each situation and conflict.
3:33⅓ - Vinyl from Lou Donaldson on Occasion of His Birthday
Applause Music was the Jazz/Classical side of Cheapo when they basically owned both sides of the block over at Snelling and Saratoga. I worked at Applause for a holiday season with an absolute jazz snob who taught me so much and only made me feel slightly like an idiot for not knowing everything yet by the time I was 17 years old. I bought a Lou Donaldson record during my run there and I fell in love with it. It was funky, it was easier to enjoy than some of the stuff I was trying to turn myself on to. It was exciting, it was enthralling and it was the first time I realized a non-vocalist, non-rhythm section member could themselves be funky. Today is his 96th birthday and he’s still with us. Thanks for showing me more sides of the funk Lou!
Otis Spann album cover.
The Worst Spices
1. Bay leaf - you don’t do anything besides for slow me down
2. Tarragon - you do almost nothing
3. Thyme - I don’t like what you do very much
4. Anise - never liked ya
5. Fennel - see number 7 but more
6. Celery Seed - no one has ever ran out of celery seed
7. Not Smoked Paprika - what are we doing here, does your smoker work?
8. Cumin seed - why don’t you just grind it for me, thanks bye!
3:33⅓ - Vinyl from Otis Spann - Happy Halloween
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins takes up a lot of the bluesy real estate for Halloween offerings but that’s not all there is in the genre. Grabbed a tune “It Must Have Been the Devil” from Otis Spann. Otis Spann is my favorite blues piano player of all time and he is really under-appreciated as a vocalist. Enjoy!
Otis Spann album cover.
The best you get
The best it gets in this world
is a couple days with your children next to the lake
A couple miles with the music too loud to shout out the directions
A few times in a sauna where you fall asleep awake
Life is long, life is short, the good times aren’t distributed evenly, but you never know when another good time will sneak up on you.
A couple scenes from movies you can remember line for line
A couple records that sound so good you just start them again when they finish.
Go See Big Trouble
I play in a spectacular instrumental band. We are called Big Trouble. Here’s our most recent bio:
Big TRouble Blurb: Big Trouble is the instrumental arm of the mighty Heiruspecs crew. Featuring Josh Peterson, Sean McPherson and Peter Leggett from Heiruspecs alongside Steve McPherson, the group specializes in intriguing covers of songs you know, in ways you never imagined them. There's a lot of groove, some spectacular moments of beauty and every thirty-five gigs, there's even a drum solo. Have they been together for 15 years? Yes. Do they have a record? That’s a no.
This Saturday we’re playing at the White Squirrel in Saint Paul. The show is from 6-8pm, great hours to have some fun, take in some music and still have it together when your kids wake up at 6:44am on Sunday morning. So come enjoy the show on Saturday!
Stay Optimistic
I listened to a podcast from Vox today that asked some questions about what an experience like the pandemic is doing for all of us mentally. TLDR: Bad things mostly!
The pandemic has brought a lot of terrible things into my life. So many close friends lost family members, a lot of my friends have gotten really sick. It turned one Heiruspecs record into a five year email chain (new album coming soon!). It derailed one of the company’s I own. It exposed so much that is wrong and that is right about the world. The pandemic has let us sometimes find out the truth about each other and it has often been terrible. Somebody’s got a big sign in their window on Randolph that reads “We’ll All Get Through This Together” and sometimes it rings so empty to me. We have cheated each other out of money, we’ve stolen food out of hungry kids mouths, we’ve killed each other at startling rates, we’ve screamed down school board members doing their best in a difficult situation. I think it’s possible the pandemic has pushed the country beyond the brink. You hear people decry all the time how divided our country is now. And folks point out that Republicans and Democrats used to be so much more civil. I don’t hear as often the clarification that there is not much civil in what many leaders aspire to do. Am I supposed to remain civil to white supremacists because they share a name with a party from fifty years ago? That’s a joke. That’s a taunt. I will be civil towards people who are civil.
Terrible things are going to keep on happening, sometimes they won’t for a couple days, but right now we seem to be in a cycle of school shootings, horrendous news from Iran and the war in Ukraine, a tremendous loss of reproductive freedoms for women across our country. I don’t let these things pass me by. I read Washington Post on my iphone when I poop just like you. But I don’t resign myself to a world where these things keep happening. I aspire to make incremental changes for the good both as an employee, a human, a citizen and more. I fooled myself into thinking that I didn’t have time to contribute my time to a lot of “make the world” better efforts but I think that’s wrong. I thought I could send a check. For a long time I fooled myself into thinking that all the cool benefit shows that Heiruspecs played and donated our time to functioned as my service in the world of volunteering. And just to be clear, we did a bunch of benefits and when it works for us, we continue to do that. We’ve been a part of raising money for the Philando Castile Scholarship, we run our own scholarship and in our young days we got behind a lot of causes. But we don’t play as often anymore, and we don’t play nearly as many benefits. I find myself really busy being a positive part of my family, doing a kick ass job at Jazz88, supporting Trivia Mafia and running the still active parts of my musical career. It’s a good laundry list.
A year ago I thought that if COVID came down and plucked me from the Earth I would feel really good about what I did on this earth. Now I feel a different responsibility. This country has been a democracy for such a criminally short period of it’s history. We aren’t a democracy until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. If you are old like me your parents might’ve voted at a time when black people were strategically kept from voting. We still live in a time where the potency of the black vote is willfully and openly diluted. I believe in our life time there is going to be a white supremacist candidate for President who will say “this is the last election where the outcome will be decided in any significant way by the white vote. Vote for me and I’ll make sure that white votes keep on making the difference in who is elected, pluralities be damned.” That is truly not far off from the rhetoric we hear currently. And I believe that that campaign would gather steam. I can’t sit on my hands until that happens. I need to work from my position, from my privilege, from my pseudo-level of influence to point out how lazy, bankrupt and corrupt that point of view is. But beyond just sending checks and writing blogs I need for myself and my family to see me set aside our most valuable asset, our time, to fight against this and to fight for the opposite, a healthy democracy where votes are trusted and we live not just up to the best ambitions of the founders but beyond them.
My wife and I are reading the book “Bowling Alone”. The book establishes a decline in civic participation in the 1970s. I’ve already received some gems from the book and I’m just about half way through. But I am starting to believe that though I am busy everyday, I am not seeing some of the pockets of time that I could dedicate to my community, to community involvement. I wonder if some of that energy will come with me being more closely connected with the Temple we are members of. I’m not Jewish but the rest of my family is and I’ve been really impressed with Temple Israel in almost every capacity since we became members over there and I believe getting involved in there might check a lot of boxes for what I’m looking for. In the parlance of “Bowling Alone” I am more of a schmoozer than a macher. I like having people over, I am unafraid to initiate a conversation with a stranger, I reach out, I start events, I make fun things happen. But I haven’t done a lot in my personal life to organize for the greater good or to harness my schmoozosity into a concerted effort to improve the world I live in.
But I’m not giving up. I’m not positive that society is terminally screwed. We face horrible facts, milestones and stories every single day. My impression being born white and upper middle class in 1981 was that the worst of it was behind us. Part of my college degree was in African-American studies and I graduated right around 2007, I read most of the material about the Civil Rights era with the underlying spirit that the worst of it was behind us. This was short-sighted on my part. At age 25, one wants to think that the world is on a straight path towards being a spectacular place. I’ve grown to understand that we are living in turbulent times where drastic measures are on the table from the good guys and the bad guys. The bad times are behind us, ahead of us and they are right now. We are living in the moment where we can make thirty years of change in five years. And if it doesn’t work I want to die trying, I don’t want to die resigned to think that stuff is shit. Even when I go to a hotel for a two day stay I empty my whole bag into the dressers. I stick my foot into things and I go the whole way. I want to know that between the things that bring me joy, the things that bring me money and the duties I have to my family I contributed to helping the world, to helping my community. I’m optimistic about all of this. I think we can all find some of that optimism. I know a lot of people already have. The pandemic changed to me what I think success can look like, the pandemic made me value the people most immediately in my life more. The pandemic made me realize that I need to enjoy where I am more, but I am responsible to make where I am better. I have had a really beautiful life so far, I get paid a living wage for playing jazz music. My backup plan to being a bassist was being a radio host. These are pipe dreams and I get to do that. And I am the co-owner of a beautiful company called Trivia Mafia*. I have amazing children, an amazing wife. I have so much to be thankful for and so much reason to hope that more people can have things to be thankful for. I have so much reason to hope that people can keep the freedoms, the joys, the pleasures they are thankful for. We are in turbulent times, but I am not standing by. I am optimistic and I know that amazing things come out of hard times.
*In fact I was lucky to have a meeting with one of our employees this morning and unsolicited she said that it was a great company to work for, like truly great. She is not one to give out praise willy-nilly, I knew she meant that shit and it made me very happy. I can’t claim much credit for the current Trivia Mafia culture, but I helped plant the seeds when I was working the day to day so I’ll take it!
3:33⅓ - Vinyl from Leo Nocentelli
I’ve never pre-ordered a record faster than when I saw that there was a recently discovered record by Leo Nocentelli from the 1970s. What an absolute treat. The record is gold, the music is gold, the vibe is excellent. Enjoyed it and it gets a lot of spins back home.
3:33⅓ - Vinyl from Deodato
Dropped a little Deodato on the turntable but I didn’t got to a tried and true one from the record, pulled out his Debussy cover of “Prelude to An Afternoon of a Faun”. Enjoyed it.
3:33⅓ - Vinyl from Kings Go Forth
Long live Milwaukee. I saw this group put on a great show at The Cedar back maybe 2011, 2012. It was an early date with my now wife then girlfriend Rachel. What a treat. This one of the first non-hip hop records I purchased. I just wanted to hear it at home and on vinyl.
3:33⅓ - Vinyl from The Three Sounds
I’m realizing some folks read this blog and also don’t want to get involved in social media more than they have to. So I’m going to share the vinyl I’m playing at Jazz88 right here.
Sean’s Unsolicited Advice for Doing Excellent Radio
I find it funny when people who I don’t think are seasoned and world-class at their craft provide advice or input on how to be excellent at something. But here’s the thing, I think I am quite excellent at being on the radio. I’m not seasoned (I believe in there being a ten year full time “seasoning” mark in most professional pursuits. I’ll explain in the bottom paragraph as a pseudo footnote.) But I also feel that if you have some skills, you should impart it. Do you ever think about the angels who make videos explaining shit on YouTube? Maybe that one video made them $425 dollars. But honestly, they did it because everyone should know how to spackle a hole in the ceiling or replace a garbage disposal. That’s beautiful, that’s generous. And there are very few things I feel I know well enough to provide advice for. But, as far as doing some good work on the radio, particularly in the music format, I have some advice that I think is helpful and not obvious.
No Audience Will Complain About You Talking Too Little
One time a fellow bass player talked about showing up a half hour late to a bar gig but "makig up for it” by adding some pretty “long bass solos”. My friend should’ve been fired that night. That’s a strike one, strike two situation. You shouldn’t show up late for a gig, but if you do, you shouldn’t overcompensate by dropping big bass solos. Moving that to a radio space: you shouldn’t show up late for gigs, you should avoid making mistakes, but there is no mistake you can cover up for by offering up more of your mouth opening and closing. We don’t get paid per word and the best in our business are generally the most efficient. Even if some of the best are long winded, they are still efficient. Their art is fitting an article into three paragraphs. But that is the rare breed in radio. for most broadcasters the art should be fitting a paragraph into a sentence, a sentence into a word, a word into a pause.
Be an Iceberg
Have you taken one of those diversity training events where they' show you the iceberg graphic? Here it is.
An Iceberg
So, the basic thing is that beneath the observable person you are interacting with there are layers of diversity, uniqueness and variety that you simply can’t ascertain from the bit of the iceberg that is poking out. This is a clunky analogy, but I believe a good broadcaster should know more than they let on. Let different tips of the iceberg come out each day, on different topics, at different times. If you want to say two smart things about an artist who you know very little about. . .you should learn nine things about that artist. I believe it is noticeable if someone is rattling off the entire contents of their knowledge about The Smashing Pumpkins, or Clifford Brown in twenty-two seconds. It rings a certain way and if one is just an inch deep about any topic, one is very prone to mistakes. Plus, you’re going to play this artist again, if you always spit out the same two facts, it’s tired, it’s not rewarding. Now, the ultimate goal should be to take those nine facts and establish something beyond any single fact about that artist. Perhaps a thesis, an opinion, a new thought about said artist. This does not have to be deep, but I think hosts who provide no context for the music they’re playing, I don’t know, I can’t understand that as acceptable. I believe that an intrinsic value add to radio listening is having a trusted narrator ushering listeners between hopefully somewhat disparate elements. . .a connective tissue that lets me know that even if I don’t love this song, I might love the next one. That connective tissue involves a lot more than just music criticism, it includes humanity, relatability et cetera but honestly. . .if you have no ability to metabolize the music and offer a through line with your presentation, I don’t know what you’re doing. I simply don’t think charming is enough, no matter how charming.
Have Utter Respect for the Time and Intelligence of Your Listener
If you don’t care about the people listening, I think you are just drawing a paycheck, and generally not a very big one. The honor in doing radio is in being the listener-in-chief. You should love what is happening on the station you work at and you should be humbled to get to toss in a couple comments in between to make it even better. You should believe that listening to this station is a gift even without your silky voice, and you should believe that the folks tuned in care about what is happening on the station. NOTE: This might not be true. But you should believe it. I understand that many people don’t care about who is talking on their favorite radio station unless they decide they don’t like that person. I understand that many people who are tuned into a radio station aren’t choosing to be tuned in, they are listening passively, maybe they have to listen to this cause it is on at their job. But, I believe in the philosophy of the customer is always right. And I don’t necessarily think of listeners like customers, but I think of them as always being right. Also, you’ll never meet the monstrous majority of the people who listen to the radio, if you’ve made an unfounded decision that they are unintelligent, what does that say about you? Seriously.
If You Win, You Lose
I had a conversation a long time back with Ant, the producer for the hip-hop group Atmosphere about his production style. In short he said that if a listener checks out Atmosphere and remembers the beat/production as opposed to Slug, the lyricist, they had both lost. The north star of most music is the vocals. That’s facts. The north star of music radio is music. In ratios it’s not even close right? The music you pick or present has a much bigger on your presentation than your witty banter. Now, you may be in a situation where you pick very little or none of the music you play. . .but. . .it’s still part of your presentation. If your presentation is not in service of the music it will not measure up to snuff. You can’t fight with music and win. Music is magical and humans are not. Music is otherworldly and spoken voice is not. We are lucky that there is some small way that human voices can enhance the joy of listening to music, something that can be added to the joy by your presence, but if you don’t respect the hierarchy I don’t think you’ll ever do your job properly.
Don’t Try to Out Alexa Alexa
If you asked a human being what the weather was like and they said “47 degrees with moderate winds coming in from the NW winds, blowing at 3.7 miles per cubic bionomineter” you would lose your shit right then and there and kill the robot infidel. We have robots in our house and people still turn on the radio. Most people turn on the radio not for another robot, but for another person. So tell them the weather like you would tell another person. NOW LOOK: it’s very possible if my wife asks me what the weather is I’d say “It’s cold as shit, I just froze my toes off putting something in the compost bin on the porch”. DON’T SAY ALL THAT ON THE RADIO. But, I think a little humanness, a little “probably a good day for layers” or “this is a bundle up situation” “I expect to see a lot of cargo shorts on the patios” to be completely legit, to be welcome. AGAIN, we have robots in our house, don’t be a robot on the radio.
Don’t Be The Same and Don’t Be Dumb Different
Don’t manufacture ways to be zany, but also don’t manufacture ways to be predictable and lame. You generally greet people a handful of ways, adjusting for things like the time of day, your mood, the location and some totally wild card combination of variables. Permit some of those variables to factor into your presentation, let Monday be a little different than Friday, let 5:15pm be a little more magical than 9:22am. Again, robots are readily available for our jobs, give them a reason to keep hiring us by staying human. BUT DON’T overdo it. People come to radio for some consistency, some reliability and if you fritter all of that way in just being a hot mess of unpredictability. . .who wants to bring that in to their house. So be consistent in a human way, with all the variabilities that that entails.
Slap Bass is Great
You should do everything within your power to get great at everything you can get great at. There are some “cheesy” radio skills that I think some of the high-minded hoity-toits that I’ve brushed shoulders with eschew, whether that be ramping a song (talking over the intro), talking over beds of music, editing promos or whatever. But it reminds me of a thing my very first bass teacher said. . . QUICK ASIDE: my very first bass teacher is the very successful very famous Sean Hurley who plays with John Mayer and others but when I knew him he was just a great bassist out of Massachusetts. He said “I used to think slap bass was lame so I didn’t work on it, until I realized that I wanted someone who called me for any opportunity to be glad they called me”. That stuck with me. If you can get your array of skills up to the point where they don’t have much reason to call somebody else, you’ll be all set to keep on getting those calls.
Don’t Confuse Success with Talent, Don’t Confuse Talent with Success
I am trying to sharpen my skills as a radio host with a different outlook than I approached my music making and most significantly bass playing in the earlier years of my life. I was by no means a child prodigy in anything, but I got the music stuff cooking professionally on the young side. I was playing legitimate gigs with bands that I was booking to audiences of 300-1200 by the time I was 21. There are all sorts of caveats to this. . .many of the gigs were opening for bigger bands, some of these gigs were definitely glorified high school parties that I had talked venues into having. . .but the record stands. My shit didn’t stink and you couldn’t tell me otherwise. The nucleus of my success during those years was Heiruspecs. Heiruspecs was (and is) filled with musicians and emcees who are more talented than me. This has been a wonderful thing for the band musically, but it has been intimidating to me. I am part of a bullet-proof band without being a bullet-proof instrumentalist myself. Instead of tending to my shortcomings, working on them, finding new paths, I wanted to stay doing what I knew I was great at. Even when I was practicing a lot, I wasn’t practicing the right shit, I wasn’t looking at where I was lacking and fixing it. I was just running down the lines I was already comfortable with in different keys. If my band wasn’t doing well. . .I would’ve known I needed to get better at bass. But instead, I took the success of a thing I was a part of and assumed I was as successful individually as I was as a part of that group. It was wishful thinking, it was foolish. I’m not being wishful or foolish in the radio chapter of my career. Some of the early stuff I got going on in radio was big, big time to me at least. Big radio station, positive comments, good feelings all around. But that didn’t mean I didn’t need to fill in things, if there was something I was bad at, I remained bad at it even if I had a desk at a cool radio station. If I couldn’t handle this or that element of the work, my profile didn’t matter, it didn’t matter that my neighbor thought it was cool she heard me on the radio.
You’re Always Auditioning
This is a Ray Browner. He’s the world’s best upright bass player of all time. I got to see him live once and I got to see him in clinic twice. He pointed out that “you’re always auditioning”. We’re sitting in Bandana Square in St. Paul at 4:15pm on a Tuesday and Ray’s in front of max 25 high school students and he said “look I don’t know if the guy walking in to deliver the mail right now is a cousin of Quincy Jones. . .you are always auditioning and you can always be judged”. I know some baller ass people listen to radio stations, sometimes I’ll meet amazing, unbelievably lettered people and they say they hear me on the radio. I never know who is listening, and I never know when they’re listening, if I’m working a shift on low sleep and handling the 1am hour. . .that still could be the one time when someone who could really change my life is listening. It’s just a fact with radio, you don’t know who is listening, so you can’t phone it in cause you think it’s bullshit. Today is the first day someone is hearing Miles Davis, and one of those packages sitting on my desk might contain the next artist to change the art form as much as Miles. You are always auditioning.
It Still Beats Work
I think being great at radio is quite a demanding job, I mean that in the amount of hours it takes to become talented, and I think it' also takes a lot of time to stay good, to stay pertinent, to be centered on that. But, you frequently receive health insurance, a steady pay check and a job you can explain to your in-laws more easily than playing bass or running a trivia company simply to try to communicate around music and the news of the day. If that doesn’t feel magical to you, you should step aside and let the people who it feels magical to keep on working. Music is a gift, it’s a magical gift. The job of radio isn’t magical, but it’s next to magic, so if you do it truly right, with true passion uninterrupted by distraction, you are in the magic. Sound like it.
TEN YEAR SEASONING: At the top of this blog I mentioned by idea that ten years is proper seasoning time for many creative pursuits. I believe that primarily because of a personal experience. In 2011 I played a show at the Southern Theater called the Southern Songbook with a bunch of great players. DeVon from Heiruspecs was handling the leadership alongside Adam Levy & Lily Troila. The band was the Heiruspecs band. And I remember just knocking the shit out of the park on that show. Well-rehearsed but not over rehearsed, excellent impassioned performances and the question marks we had during rehearsals were all about the actual needs of the songs, not a lot of getting mired in chord changes, tempo issues. The things we were trying to resolve were artistic and required expertise. And I don’t think you can really get that seasoned vibe until the technical side stops eluding you. Once you can make quick work of the fundamentals you can give more time to the things that distinguish between good and great. I remember Martin Devaney started to work with some more premier musicians a little bit into his career and I asked him if they required him to provide chord charts. He said “no, those guys can get the chords the first time I play it, they are asking questions about the themes, the nuances, what colors the song connotes”.* I remember thinking that those musicians had arrived at a higher level of craft than I had. I feel the sky is the limit for my potential as a broadcaster to be perfectly honest, but I know that a lot of my issues are still technical, they are still the equivalent of chord change type problems, not nuance type problems.
*Footnote to a footnote: I spelled connote correctly with no need for spell-check.
Saturdays Are In Big Trouble
Round about 2006/2007 I helped put together an instrumental group with my brother Steve and Josh and Peter from Heiruspecs. This lark of a band was built for two reasons: to make music with world class rapper and poet Alexei Casselle and get booked at restaurants and quieter spots to play long sets like my brother and I used to in the Berkshires. Through the past fifteen years the group has become like that warm hoodie that feels better than any garment of clothing in your house. And sort of, you don’t actually care how it looks, you love how it feels. . .but it really does look pretty good. We recently played a birthday party for our good friend and superfan Brenda at the White Squirrel and the vibe was right. I love close by, the room sounds awesome, Trivia Mafia’s office is upstairs in case I need a secure spot for a number 2. It checks all the boxes. So the booking person there, and a dear friend of mine, Laura, agreed to put us down for a couple Saturday gigs this year. WE WANT TO KEEP ON DOING THIS NEXT YEAR TOO. BUT I NEED THE OLD PEOPLE OF THE TWIN CITIES (and by old I mean 32-58) to come out, drink drinks, talk with friends and enjoy music from 6-8pm.
Listen, get your dinner going a little bit late, take in a set of music, have an adult cocktail or a hop water or something else off their awesome cocktail list. Whatever you do just come down and enjoy Big Trouble. We sound great, we are a band where you can dive in and listen to every note, you can also chill out, touch base with your friends and tune in from time to time and guess which pedal Steve is using. We have high energy jams, we have introspective jams. We dive in and deliver the goods, with no pesky singing. What an experience. Roll through and enjoy us. Come on Saturday October 29 from 6-8pm at White Squirrel.
A flyer for Big Trouble. Saturday October 29 and Saturday November 29 - 6-8pm, at White Squirrel.
Only Ten Dinners for the Rest of Your Life
You have been thrown into a terrible world where you can only have ten entrees for dinner. This doesn’t mean ten exact dishes, this means you can only order ten things in the universe of food for your dining after 5:30pm for the rest of your life. There is no money exchanged here, so you still have to cook if you don’t have restaurant money at the time, so you can’t pick a bunch of stuff you can’t eat. Here’s what I go with:
Spaghetti and meatballs
Cheeseburger and Fries
White Chicken Chili
Thai Green Curry w/ Tofu
Steak with predictable sides
Cobb Salad
Vegetarian Greek Dinner with Tempeh (this is a delicious workhorse dinner innovated by my wife Rachel)
Enchiladas
Salmon with Predictable Sides
Sushi Dinner
That’s it! I could live with that. I would agree to eat only those items for dinner for a one time payment of $75,000.
The Other Problem With Cancelled Musicians
Before I get to my main point: I disagree with the popular term “cancelled”. We often use the term cancelled for things we loved that were terminated by a faceless force like network TV, like Freaks and Geeks. You can’t cancel a person. And when we hear about a show being cancelled we think of it as outside of the control of the creators of the show. Freaks and Geeks got cancelled from on high by NBC. The musicians who got cancelled, they got cancelled not by NBC but by sexting 17 year olds, or by jumping out of closets naked with their hands on their junk. NBC wasn’t involved in your manual stimulation. The behaviors that caused them to be publicly reprimanded were not manufactured out of thin air. There may be details the musicians disagree with, there may be inaccurate statements, but I haven’t seen someone called out for absolutely nothing. My last bit on my soapbox: contrary to what the cancelled say, there is totally levels to this. People act like everyone is painted with the same brush. Are you serious? Some folks come out of serious allegations with a serious knock to their fame, to their respect, to their standing. Some folks get called out, but still navigate their way back into the conversation. And some people have done things that are horrendous, but they convincingly apologize, seek to repair the situation, take the allegations seriously. It is not one size fits all and if you think that I bet it is because that conclusion favors you and your situation.
But here’s the main thing. The biggest issue with terrible behavior of a sexual nature by musicians is that it has severely negatively impacted a fellow human’s life. Many, thought not all, of these victims are women. They have been violated and treated poorly, often by someone they formerly thought was a stand up, decent person. The accusations are almost never singular. They are almost always a part of a pattern. You can not believe in a lot of things, but I bet you believe in patterns. If you always get sick from eating the chili at Wendy’s you stop eating the chili at Wendy’s. If your friend says they went to Wendy’s once and they got sick off the chili it probably doesn’t change your chili outlook all that much. But six people got sick from the same chili? Fuck that chili. You really think 10 women got together to lie on you. . .to besmirch your semi-good name? Nope, I believe in patterns. Five women talking the same behavior, that behavior has some truth to it. And when I know it’s a pattern, I know it’s a part of your life. And here’s why after I hear these stories I have a hard time coming back to your music. . .you aren’t putting the you I now know about into your music. And you weren’t putting the you I now have to confront into the records I listened to before. If something that is part of your daily routine is sliding into DMs thousands of times with women decades younger than you, or hopping out of closets with your business in your hand. . .that never made it into a chorus? A bridge? An outro? No, you can’t engage your art with these behaviors. And everyone presents a different version of themselves on stage than the one as they truly are. But this is a gaping wide hole. This means that your presentation of your self is really selective. You don’t go deep into yourself. And the truth is, if you did, you’d be in even more trouble. But I’ve built up these expectations for my favorite artists: if you go through a divorce, I’m anticipating a divorce album. If you have a baby, baby album. Sober, sober album. Trading pills for sexual favors. . .probably gonna sing about something else. Forcing yourself on woman backstage. . .the songs will be about romantic love. I like to think with the really talented writers, I’m getting some takes on what is central to them, I’m getting songs that get to their core. And that’s what makes this triply scary. . .what if behaviors like this are things you do and it doesn’t even hit you in your soul? What if pouncing on an inebriated woman backstage is just another god damn Tuesday for you? It’s just a thing you do like buying a toothbrush when you need a new one. . .I don’t expect to hear a song about your toothbrush. But your abuses are so workaday. . .so quixotic that they won’t jump onto the page for you?
There is an honesty, rawness and an ability to share oneself that I expect from the writers in our world. I don’t love the folks who are pure craft. I love the folks who put themselves into their music, they grapple with their life in parts of their work. And when I think about these seismic accusations, these clarifying pieces of information about someone’s personal life. I then realize that all the records are going to come up short after this. You’re not going to talk about the behaviors, you’re not going to talk about the accusations. You’re not going to defend yourself, and you’re not going to condemn yourself. You’re going to ask everyone to believe that these patterns, these stories, believe that they’re cooked up, materialized out of thin air, that these patterns that last years, that span area codes, they’re bogus. You want to keep on writing the same kind of songs about the same kind of relationships you don’t seem to actually be having. There’s a disconnect. There’s a pattern. You’re not cancelled, you’re out in the light and you look worrisome. Worrisome.
Great Food in St. Paul
There’s a new food writer at the Pioneer Press and Jess Fleming asked readers to tell Jared where to eat in St. Paul. Bloggin’ to the rescue Jared, I got you.
Best Sandwich
The best sandwich in St. Paul is the surprise sandwich at the St. Paul Cheese Shop. It costs $10. If you want to get it on baguette it’s another $2. Don’t do it. The baguette actually isn’t spectacular. But they basically put together a couple sandwiches that generally contain a creamy cheese, a courageously fruitty jam and some delicious meat. There are minor variations and they almost never go wrong. If you also have a Jewish wife at home who doesn’t eat pork at home you can ask for it without pork. Not only it is a great sandwich, it’s a great conversation. For years I would pick up three of these to kick off the Trivia Mafia Monday lunch meetings. You could trade half sandwiches, you could discuss the spice level. It’s a conversation starter in a way that a sandwich that is described on a menu never could be.
Best Cup of Coffee
The best cup of coffee in St. Paul is at J&S at Randolph and Saratoga. I love a coffee shop with knick knacks, that has music every once in awhile but not all the time, that has big colorful mugs. I guess what I’m saying is I like a 90s coffee shop. And coffee shops were one of the things I missed the most during the throws of the pandemic. The bit of conversation with the barista, the ability to sequester yourself in a spot where suddenly your book, your taxes, your friend, your cafe are all easier to focus on than they are at your own home. And I do believe that a medium coffee is one of the perfect things on this earth. It’s the right size, it’s the right feel in your hand. You take one of those coffees outside and sit down and do ONE THING for 40 minutes, maybe it’s talk, maybe it’s read, maybe it’s write, but it’s something and you do it and you do it with your friend the coffee. Nothing better.
Best Ethiopian Food
This one isn’t even close to me. I just think Fasika makes the best Ethiopian food I’ve ever had anywhere. If you are going there with two hungry adults who both eat meat, get the Zilzil Tibs and the Veggie sampler. Share it all, eat it all. Love it. If you are going with someone who doesn’t like eating with their hands. . .consider going with someone else. . .but if you can’t. . .get the chicken tibs with rice, still legit amazing and less heavy than the veggie sampler or the Zilzil Tibs.
Best Cocktail
The Sazerac from Meritage is unfuckwithable. It is a delicious cocktail in an amazing environment. If you are sitting good financially I recommend buying a shrimp cocktail because honestly, you deserve it and you love shrimp. But that Sazerac does everything a cocktail is supposed to. You feel a little buzzed just sniffing it, and then you feel intrigued by the flavors, and then you feel like everything is simpler in your life for a couple minutes. And then you get another. And then you don’t feel so bad about spending $40 on shrimp.
Best Fish Situation
Not all Brasas are created equal. That’s just a fact. And the only Brasa you can get catfish at is on Grand Ave. It’s incredible. The sauce that comes with is incredible. And even though catfish isn’t kosher my wife lets me eat it at our house. Thank you Rachel. Catfish responds to breading in a very interesting way and it creates lots of different surfaces and crevices of salty fishy delishiosios. Plus it comes with a red sauce that has a bit of creamy and a bit of spice to it. And you might think. . .catfish. . .great, that’s enough, I don’t need dessert. Naw, you need dessert. I think pudding is mostly gross (I don’t want WET desserts, that’s why tiramisu can die slow). But, that butterscotch pudding? This particular pudding, spectacular. Killing it.
Best Appetizer
Italian fries can mean a lot of things. Many of those things suck. A pile of fries with oregano and parmesan tossed on top is not an upcharge I’m willing to deal with. BUT, the Italian fries at Italian Pie Shoppe are killing it. Spectacular. When I was in high school it was my favorite food on earth. But I’ve grown. Now it’s just my favorite appetizer in St. Paul, and I get em with broccoli and a touch of cheddar. These have nothing to do with potatoes. This is just pizza crust folded around mozzarella with a reasonable dusting of Italian seasoning. You step it up a bit going with the brocchi, like I said they sneak in a touch of cheddar and some finely chopped up broccoli. Get that shit.
Best Curry Dish
I love arguing about what the best Thai food in St. Paul is. Great. Awesome conversation, happy to have it. I’ll even listen to your suggestions. And I’ll even respect the new Thai places that just shot up in the last couple years. But I won’t entertain discussions about the best Green Curry. Because that matter is settled. It’s going down at Ruam Mit in downtown St. Paul! How’s the buffet at Ruam Mit? unlabeled and it feels risky! How’s the ambience? Kinda basic! It’s not that bad, but it’s not Instagrammable if that’s what you’re asking. But the team who runs the place is awesome. And the food off the menu is incredible. They raise they prices maybe every month and a half but I’ll be honest, I’m gonna keep going. That green curry is absolutely out of control. So delicious. The broccoli is perfect and plentiful. The tofu is crispy and then just a touch of creamy. The basil, the creamy sauce. I want it right now, and I had close to identical green curry from somewhere else tonight. But still, I’m in. If someone walked up to my house right now at 10:38 at night and said “give me a hundred dollars and I’ll give you this green curry” I would be asking if they accepted Paypal.