AbandonedScore

BeatOven

DuranDuran

My new mini-hobby: instagramming musical detritus found in my neighborhood. A few recent examples of the sadly discarded.

November 2014 - I had a lovely time at the ASCAP Awards, celebrating with my boss Steve Rosenthal and the amazing Jocelyn Arem, winners of the Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Multimedia Award for the Caffe Lena History Project. Well-deserved recognition for this book, CD box set (now heading into a second pressing!) and website documenting Saratoga, NY's much-loved folk club.

My reading and listening list got a lot longer, too. I can't wait to dive into ASCAP Award winning essays and articles (and related recordings), including Andy Zax's "Scenes from the Chocolate Orchid Piano Bar", Patrick Joseph Huber's "Black Hillbillies: African American Musicians on Old-Time Records, 1924-1932" and so much more.

Since I have had two recent instances of scanning radio stations while driving around Brooklyn and landing on brilliance, I feel compelled to amend my previous complaint that all NYC radio is crap. Most of it is crap. But then one sunny afternoon, I happened upon a block of Harry Partch - Harry Effin Partch! - on a station in the low 90s. You know who can recognize Partch's Chromolodean or Spoils Of War in the first few seconds? This girl. Then, a week later, I flipped on WFMU and heard something so freakishly familiar I was momentarily disoriented. It was a song off of Hailu Mergia'sTche Belew, which I restored and remastered this summer for Awesome Tapes From Africa, and thus had listened to many, many, many times in exquisite detail. And it sounded great! Even across the airwaves into my early 2000s Volkswagen.

This does not change the fact that my two year old daughter requests "Bout That Bass" every time I put her in the car.