Banal Stories #3: Guitar Lessons

In the summer of 1992, when I was 17, I decided I would work for my Mom’s office leasing business, which was on the 12th floor of a building on Kirby near Miyako. Normally, I lived and went to school on Houston’s north side. But I was now close enough to Rockin’ Robin that I [...]

Banal Stories #2: Quitting Piano

During elementary school, I took piano and voice lessons from a lady at church for nearly three years. I hated those lessons. I hated practicing. I hated sight reading the heavily simplified classical music. I hated singing songs from the Bill Gaither songbook.

My dad and I had a lot of arguments about my disinterest / [...]

The Essential: NAPcast 2.10

For this one, I asked our editors to submit songs we would play if we were DJs on a classic rock / AOR station. In particular, I was thinking about what kind of tracklist we would have generated if it was our job to program this compilation: http://lala.com/zJPTI
Houston Press writer Craig Hlavaty linked to [...]

 
icon for podpress  NAPcast 2.10 Essential Rock [59:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (26)

Sonic Youth #1: Banal Stories of How I Came to Music

The early songwriter I was visiting the home of my parent’s friends playing in one of those tiny plastic pools when one of the party’s attendees said something like, “hey that’s a nice song you’re singing. Did you know there’s a real song just like that? It’s called, ‘Splish Splash [...]

I love me some Beach House

It’s been a while since I’ve heard a record I enjoy as much as Beach House’s Teen Dream. It just doesn’t happen for me very often anymore. That I listen over and over to a record. That I can’t not listen. That I think every song must have been loved equally by its maker. That [...]

Piano Chords

I do not play guitar by ear. I play because I managed to mechanically learn the chords and beat them into song structures. I learned from this book:

For years, I’ve wondered whether a similar solution was available for Piano, because I’d love a chart that showed me chords and chord shapes so I could [...]

NAPCast 1.10

Our aim in the new year is to have a new NAPcast for you once a month, featuring selected tracks from all seven of our knowledgeable and opinionated editors. Here’s this month’s NAPcast.

Biggie vs Tupac vs The xx – “Runnin With The xx (Quix vs Elliot Blend)” | Annie
Huak – “Sodium Chloride” | Joshua
Elvis Presley [...]

 
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I Went and Got Messed Up Again

So I got the new Spoon record, and I’m sorta meh on it.
As usual it sounds amazing. Probably the best drum sound they’ve ever achieved. But the songs aren’t there. Not the way they were for the last two records.
Spoon rightfully gets a lot of credit for their attention to sonic detail and [...]

Working through the stack

Some weeks I’m lazy. Some weeks I’ve got a decent idea for a post. Some weeks, I’ve got time and energy but no ideas. Uneven quality is nature of the beast for an unpaid gig writing a weekly blog post. But I do have a place to go for inspiration, ideas, and leftover junk. Just [...]

Flashing Lights

My favorite bloggist of the moment completes his epic 2K0 roundup of the The Most Authentic/Relevant/Successful Artists of the Decade (The Best Albums/MP3s/Songs/Artists/Bands/Humans of the Decade). The winner? John Mayer. A result that actually makes some sense once you’ve waded through Carles’s unorthodox tiers of relevance and sussed out his bizarre methodology. Whatever that is. [...]