Category: Music

MY NINE ALBUMS

Poison, Open Up and Say Ahhh! I’m an 80s kid, so of course I was into hair metal. It was all over MTV, and everybody’s older brother and sister loved Metallica and stuff, so it made sense that we all became little bratty hair metal freaks.

Bjork, Debut. I remember seeing Human Behaviour on MTV that’s all it took. Amazing visuals, and the production of this song (and the whole album) stuck, even for a nerdy metal boy like me in the early 90s.

Helmet, Meantime. This leaned more into my metal roots, and I still absolutely love this album front to back.

GNR, Appetite for Destruction. From hair metal to hair metal adjacent, really. This had some more bluesy swagger to it, though. Growing up in a very musical family helped this along, too.

Primus, Frizzle Fry. My bandmate gave me a dubbed copy of Sailing the Seas of Cheese, but for me Frizzle Fry was the album that really took hold.

Soundgarden, Badmotorfinger. Again, I was a teen in the 90s, so of course I got into this. Looking at my nine albums now, this could have been Alice in Chains Dirt.

Converge, You Fail Me. Sweaty and loud, deep and dark. Love this one.

Beastie Boys, Check Your Head. Such an influential album for a young kid with a bass and playing in scrappy bands.

Faith No More, Angel Dust. I remember listening to this album for the first time when it came out and never knowing what the next song was going to sound like.

Via My9albums.

MUSIC IS PHYISCAL

From DJ and Producer Ivan Berko over at thought enthusiast:

“I buy records every day. Lately, I buy a lot of CDs, too, because there are a lot of things that only came out on CD in the 2000s. They’re super cheap, too. You can get a stack of CDs for a dollar apiece, rip them to the computer, put them on a USB, and walk around listening to them.”

I just posted some of the ways I find new music with a little less big tech, so this piece is a fun read, especially as some of us get back to the analog ways of listening to music again.

So much of the music that shaped our early lives in pre-internet times was based on touch, and feel, and location. Think music rooms, or large stereos, where you could only listen via headphones because the cord didn’t reach very far!

Then there’s the physical act of changing CDs, flipping a record or cassette. The physical is so much a part of the music, and I think a lot of us are starting to feel that bubble up again.

CDS OUTSELLING VINYL

Look at that! “During the first half of 2026, CD sales surged 16% to 16.3 million units.”

“One explanation may be changing listening habits among younger fans. According to the report, 60% of Gen Z listeners now say they most often listen to music from the 1990s or earlier, a huge increase from 18% in 2021. Whether driven by nostalgia, discovery via streaming, or a wanting to own a tangible piece of an artist’s work, younger audiences appear to be embracing physical formats.”

Via Consequence

I CAN’T BELIEVE WE GET TO DO THIS

What’s better “marketing” than this? Screaming fans, tender moments, so many smiles – who wouldn’t want to be on that train ride, you know?

And the fun part is this; you don’t need to be as big as Hayley Williams to live this. To be this. Today, make your magic, put it into the world. Big, small, doesn’t matter, it all counts.

CASEY NEISTAT IS MAKING MUSIC

When Casey Neistat started to say that he made all the music in this video, my heart stopped. I thought we were going to hear “I don’t even know how to make music,” and then launch into how great SUNO is, or whatever the fuck that thing is.

But no – he bought an Orchid! He looked up YouTube videos to learn the notes, then chord progressions. As a third generation musician this makes me so happy.

Also, this:

MAKING MORE MUSIC

Communal Sound Choir

I met Nikki Lerner back in 2019, from Seth Godin’s Freelancer’s Workshops. We’ve been talking almost every Monday on Zoom ever since.

We originally connected over work. She had just left an office job to strike out on her own, I was trying to make my “helping busy music publicists with their digital dirty work” thing work better.

We used to over think the tiny bits, now we seek alignment in our work.

Last summer Nikki (a life long musician) wanted to work more in music, and wasn’t sure how it’d pay any bills, but just knew she had to do it.

So she formed a choir, and that led to a job offer (and more time working in music).

Sometimes we need to push into the work we want to be doing, even without any clear path of anything working out. Dare to start building ways to create tiny moments of fulfillment.

NOT ASKING FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING

From the movie “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” manager Jon Landau explaining the release to the label exec

“I’m not asking for your understanding, and I’m not here to explain Bruce’s thinking or justify his artistic choices. I am here to make sure the album is released precisely the way he wants, that’s it.

Whether or not you believe in this particular album, in this office, my office, we believe in Bruce Springsteen.”

This movie rattled me in a few ways, but this is the part I carry in my mission going back to 2001, that being, “I just wanna help my friends in band’s sell albums.”

This mission has changed over the years, notably to, “I just wanna help bands sell albums” when I helped launch Noise Creep at AOL Music in 2008. In 2021, when I launched Heavy Metal Email, a newsletter to help heavy bands return to email lists and websites as a way to regain a direct connection with fans, to 2023 when I renamed it as Social Media Escape Club, my mission is broader, “I just wanna help creative people make their work.”

It’s not quite so noble, more selfish than anything. I just wanted to see my friends in bands, or people I looked up to, I just wanted them to keep putting out their music, and keep this great big circus going – the artists who painted album covers, photographers who took band photos, the journalists who wrote about rock and roll.

I just wanna help creative people do their thing, and to do that thing they need to be able to let their fans know when they’ve got a new art exhibit, a new album to promote, a new book to order, and that’s becoming harder on social media in 2026.

So yes, I think simple email lists and websites make that work, just like post cards and tube amps and print flyers still work in the year 2026. Because it’s people, not platforms. It’s DIY venues filled with weirdos and punks and freaks that will outlast the “too big to fail” monoliths.

I’m not asking for your understanding, or to justify these artistic choices. Whether or not you believe any of this, I believe in the art.