Writer, musician, wizardly guide to platform independence
Some people know me as a guy who started a music blog back in 2001. Or from the other music blog I started in 2008. Or the heavy metal trivia thing I started on social media in 2011.
So when people ask me what I’ve been listening to lately, well, ummm… it’s an awkward conversation, since I’m listening to so much electronic music. Dark ambient, drone, jungle, minimalist techno, and stuff like this (above).
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.
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.
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
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.
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:
That’s a cello.
Hard to believe this sticker is 16 years old, and references a MySpace page.
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.
For some reason I got this video in my head tonight, and really had no way to find it. I remembered it was on Vimeo, but didn’t know to search under staff picks or whatever.
What would I even search? Robber? Exercise bike?
Good thing I made a post about in 2018.