The odds of your making a living performing your own material are small, vanishingly small. But there are a lot of ways to make a living in music. If you do succeed at the singer-songwriter path using the tips listed in the other answers, mazel tov. In the likelihood that the singer-songwriter-musician thing doesn’t pay …
Category Archives: Autobio
White people and hip-hop
A little while back I went to a screening and discussion at NYU of Blacking Up: Hip-Hop’s Remix of Race and Identity, a documentary about the wigger phenomenon by Robert Clift. I’m a very white person who has been heavily involved with “black” music over the years, like for example rapping an Ice Cube song …
Blues for the Jews
December is always a complex month for half-Jewish mutts like me. When pressured to self-identify, I usually just go with “Jewish” for the sake of simplicity, but this is in spite of not having being bar mitzvahed, not knowing any Hebrew, having only the vaguest idea what all the holidays and rituals mean, and having …
Hawaii, part five
See the photos First stop yesterday was Kipuka Puaulu, a rainforest bird park on the lower slopes of Mauna Loa. We heard more birds than we saw, aside from the many pheasants crisscrossing the trail. Hawaii is absolutely infested with pheasants. There’s a phrase I don’t find myself typing very often.
Hawaii, part four
See the photos After the better part of a day taking care of urgent internet business, and the not-so-urgent business of finding me something to read on the plane home, we finally made it outside to do something Hawaii-y: a trip to Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park, on Snorkel Bob’s list of recommended snorkeling locations. While …
Hawaii, part three
See the photos We took our first trip off the Kona coast and went to check out the more rugged and rural north coast of the Big Island. A lot of the drive took us up the seemingly endless lava plain that makes up the northwest quarter of the island. It looks a lot like …
Hawaii, part two
See the photos Lovely as it is here in Kona, it does have kind of a Disneyland quality. Anna did a great job of getting us out of the tourist rut for our second day here. She was poking around food web sites looking for interesting places to eat. That led her to a discussion …
Hawaii, part one
See the photos First of all, what are we even doing here? Anna’s dad had been sitting on a timeshare for years, and he finally concluded that he was never going to use it. So he offered it to us, and we thought, great, Hawaii. Anna’s been before, but I haven’t been anywhere remotely tropical, …
Improvising electronica
The other day Brian Eno was on NPR talking about his process. He likes to have people walk into the studio without any preconceived ideas or written out material. Then he has the musicians improvise within certain constraints. Usually these constraints are more about a mood or a vibe than a particular musical structure. After …
Janelle Monáe and Randall Thompson
Update: a reader tells me that Janelle Monáe is not quoting Randall Thompson at all, she is quoting a hymn called “All Creatures of our God and King“. I stand corrected. All the musicians I trust for recommendations in real life and on the web agree: the hottest artist in the universe right now is …