Friday, December 31, 2010

the year in concerts 2010...

It's been a lovely year. A tough year. An amazing year. A transitionary year. In 2010, my work as a grad student has moved suddenly from go-to-class/write-a-paper to read-100+books/take-an-oral-exam/write-a-dissertation. It's overwhelming and that stress has taken a bit of a toll this year. You see, I've been going to class for over 20 years now -- I've gotten really good at it. This whole "have a career in academia" thing is the next step and it's a bit of a leap. I'm up for it, though.

Luckily, this year I've had concerts. Dozens of them. I have seen more live music this year than any previous year or my life COMBINED. It has been an incredible privilege and mostly due to my association with Muzzle of Bees for with some help from the freelance gig I have writing for American Songwriter. Here's the list. I've put asterisks next to my favorites. Incredible.

2010 concerts

Bela Fleck - 2/14
Retribution Gospel Choir - 2/18
Joe Pug - 2/25
St. Vincent* - 3/30
Atoms For Peace (Thom Yorke)* - 4/10
Antlers/Phantogram 4/17
Delta Spirit/Nathaniel Rateliff/Ra Ra Riot (Daytrotter Barnstormer III) - 4/30
Santah - 5/6
Dawes/Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - 6/8

Bonnaroo - 6/10-6/13
Sarah Jarosz
Dodos
Blitzen Trapper
The xx
Dr. Dog
Punch Brothers* (twice)
Jill Andrews
Hot Rize
She and Him
The National
Steve Martin & the Steep Canyon Rangers
Dawes* (twice)
The Black Keys
The Avett Brothers*
Brandi Carlile
Dave Rawlings Machine*
Mumford & Sons*
John Prine
Stevie Wonder*
Calexico
Medeski Martin & Wood
Regina Spektor
John Fogerty
Kris Kristofferson
They Might Be Giants

Hum -7/10
Frontier Ruckus/Cary Ann Hearst - 7/15

Pitchfork Fest - 7/16-7/18
Sharon Van Etten
Tallest Man on Earth*
Broken Social Scene
Titus Andronicus
Bear in Heaven
Best Coast
Local Natives
St. Vincent
Pavement
Soundgarden - 8/5

Lollapalooza - 8/6-8/8
Mavis Staples
Drive-By Truckers
The New Pornographers
Dirty Projectors*
Jamie Lidell*
The Strokes
Rogue Wave
Stars
Warpaint
Dawes*
Grizzly Bear
Deer Tick
Spoon
The Band of Heathens
Mumford & Sons
Erykah Badu
The National
Arcade Fire

The National/Antlers* - 8/7
Trampled By Turtles - 8/26

Pygmalion Fest 9/22-9/25
Janelle Monae
Built to Spill
Duke of Uke
Those Darlins
Colour Revolt
Unwed Sailor
OWEN
+/-
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists
Roky Erickson w/ Okkervil River
The Viper and his Famous Orchestra*
Cap'n Jazz
Caribou

Jill Andrews - 12/10*

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Tumblr. Because I now blog everywhere but here.

Busy busy time of the semester. I'm still doing a little writing/web gathering on the side. If you're not already, you should check out my posts over on a Tumblr blog where I write about music related stuff. The site is mostly meant to capture and share interesting musical thoughts I have, which (I suppose) could easily be shared here as well ... but Tumblr is kind of cool and I needed an excuse to check it out, so there you go.

The coolest thing I'm doing there right now is a series I'm calling the "Sounds Similar Series" where I point to two or more songs that seem to share a musical motif. It's something I've thought about for years, and I'm finally getting around to documenting the tunes when I come across them.

Here's the link to my Tumblr site: Our Voices Lift So Easily

Friday, September 03, 2010

writing explosion

So, while my blogging here has leveled off considerably, I continue to do a lot of writing in other places.

I've mentioned www.muzzleofbees.com which continues to be the place my writing appears that I am most proud of and excited about. I spent a day with Ryan Matteson the founder and main editor of the blog over the summer at the Pitchfork festival in Chicago, and am so impressed by him. You won't meet a more authentic guy. He has a genuine interest in music and musicians that he's been able to translate into a successful blog, but more than that, he's on track to be a successful "new-school" contributor to the music business in general. He seems to understand that success is measured not by one's ability to quickly amass wealth, but rather it is a mixture of strong, honest friendships/business relationships and an anti-cynic philosophy. Cynicism prevails in music criticism especially, but Ryan's blog is mostly about promotion and spotlighting and never a space for cutting down. And I say "mostly" because the only cynicism that I read on muzzleofbees is usually in an article by me. I still have a lot to learn and am grateful for serendipitous relationships with people like Ryan who, just by example, push me out of the cynic's self-conscious cycle.

I have also recently been doing a bit of freelance writing for the magazine American Songwriter -- at least, I've been writing for their website. It's my first freelance experience. So far it's been just three pieces: A review of the Pitchfork fest, a review of a Soundgarden concert, and a record review of the new Ray Lamontagne record. I was particularly proud of the first I'm realizing that it focuses a bit on cynicism as well (a state of mind frequently on my mind, it seems). I spent a long time writing that article and thinking carefully about my argument there and I think it is a decent piece of writing. I probably spent 10 hours writing it and got paid exactly one dollar an hour for my work, their going rate ($10 per piece). The Ray Lamontagne review has also been fun to watch because of all the comments it got. People, on the whole, didn't like my review and one goes as far as to say "this isn't just a bad review, it's a bad REVIEWER!" That made me frown first, but it quickly turned to a smile when I realized that I might have had the very same response if any of my favorite artists' records were negatively reviewed. I actually felt a bit proud that my review had prompted such a large response.

The best thing by far that these writing gigs provide, despite the low/no paychecks is access to amazing live and recorded music. That Soundgarden show, for example, was sold out. They were to play for an audience in the tens of thousands a few nights later at Lollapalooza and I saw them in a small theatre and was relatively close to the stage. Also, I've been able to see a few of my favorite bands not just once but numerous times over the summer. I saw Dawes, my favorite new band, FOUR times this summer and another favorite The National three times. This is a near unspeakable privilege for a kid who has always loved live music but has never had deep enough pockets to experience it on even a fraction of this scale. So, I'm feeling blessed.

Additionally, I've started to do some "blogging" (if that's what you can call it) over on a Tumblr page. The focus here is mostly MoB's runnoff -- ideas that I have for music writing that don't quite seem to fit that particular writing space. I've stated there that I'm interested, particularly, in exploring the craft of songwriting. That is a big net, though, so I have some liberty to deviate a bit. The last post there about songs that sound similar should be a fun one to explore. I love thinking about the ways that music is constantly overlapping as influences, almost like implicit or subtextual references to other music and styles. So that should be fun.

Finally, I'm going to start trying to use this space --a blog I've titled "Sonic Rhetorics" -- to start collecting ideas and musings about my academic writing. I created it a year or so ago, but have never used it. I'll start using it this semester for a course I am taking, and we'll see what happens from there. Right now the best thing about it is the title banner.

This leads to a bit of an admission of fear: for all the writing that I have been doing this year, only a small percent of it has been academic writing. This worries me a bit. I know that in order to be successful in my career as an academic, I have to start producing and publishing my work. This is a bit daunting for me, but I have begun to make moves to help these two kinds of writing -- the kind that I want/like to do and the kind that I have to do -- and merge them. I am fairly certain that my dissertation will be a historical look at American music (focused in around the turn of the last century). I want to argue for music as rhetoric -- as persuasive discourse -- that is deeply embedded in culture, ideology and national/regional (and personal) identity. It is my hope that my writing in the last year will prime the pump on my more academic stuff. We'll see.

So that's my update for now. I still see blog as an important home base for me and so will continue to use it from time to time as such.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Muzzle of Bees posts

Howdy folks. I know, I know. An actual update? Incredible ! Absurd! Unthinkable! Well, really its kind of a half-post. Not totally new content, just a collection of the posts I have made over the last five months as a contributor to the blog Muzzle of Bees.

It was a lucky connection to have made--basically I responded to an inquiry on twitter for a new contributor and my being in Champaign-Urbana was a good fit for the regional audience of the blog (Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, and now CU). The perks are nice: review passes to concerts, occasional free music to review and keep up with, and--perhaps best of all--a new network of friends and connections in the music/blog-criticism world. It's been fun. Here's a list of my posts with links (from most recent to oldest):


If you just read one, check out the one titled "Golden" Moments. I think it is fairly representative of the best part of having a blog that lots of people actually read.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

goal '10

Learn 200. First 50(-odd)

Friday, January 01, 2010

January of 10

The blog goes unupdated for an unprecedented number of months. But has our hero been idle? Well, yes, if we're talking about the last few weeks of couch lounging in Tucson that I have been very meticulously engaged in. But on the other side of the decade, I was pushing busyness to a new level and blogging only in places where people actually read my words (and no offense to those who are reading these words, you are not forgotten, but are very likely my blood relations).

Having just completed the first decade of my adult life (I was, what, 21 in 2000? 22?) I must say that it feels like 10 years or something (now that I know what 10 years really feels like). I've completed degrees, gotten married, had kids, played in a few bands, moved several times--once across the darn country.

I'd say it was a pretty eventful decade.

Here's something strange. By the time another 10 years go by, I'll have (nearly) three teenagers, likely much less hair, and hopefully, a real job. You know, because 42 seems like a good age to start that up.

This year I've done some schooling (into the third year of grad school), some traveling (San Francisco, New Hampshire/Massachusetts/Rhode Island, Utah, and of course, our Christmas in AZ has been lovely), some teaching, and some writing.

It's also been an incredible year for music exploration. My music-blogging gig over at Muzzle of Bees has encouraged that, to be sure, but even before I started writing for the blog late in the year, it was an unprecedented music year for me. One in which I saw more live shows than any other year and possibly more than I have ever seen in ANY year when you combine them all together. I've plunged into the catalogs of countless old greats, from McCartney to Dylan and from Zeppelin to the Carter Family. I've learned a ton about the history of music in this country, especially the "blue" genres (blues and bluegrass). And also have a much larger collection of new artists that I am interested in than I have in quite some time.

And while my interest in music feels like a hobby, I have a feeling that I will look back on this year as a kind of touchstone towards a long future of study and appreciation for American music, culture, and history. In fact, this year I realized that this deep interest in music is exactly what scholars hope to stumble upon so that their research actually becomes something that they can be passionate about. Therefore, even as I think about my professional future, I now see music and its influence as extremely important (if not paramount) in my future scholarly work in rhetoric. This makes me very excited.

I'd say it has been a pretty amazing decade. I'm amazed at where we've ended up-- especially considering that we started this decade as two and have ended up as a little Stone family of 5. And while the kids were all planned (for the most part), I'm not sure we could have really planned anything else. It's turning out completely different from our expectations. And, I must say I'm quite pleased.

P.S. I love my wife. Our marriage is something else that is about to reach a decade in age. Check us out. No, seriously, check us out: