Posts Tagged ‘MP3’
The Observer Effect
In physics, “observer effect” refers to changes that the act of observation will make on the phenomenon being observed. The rule applies to rock shows. Remember those junior high school plays? Ever dig that VHS tape your parent’s recorded out of the basement? The show were better in your memories, right? Well, way back in…
Read MoreChristmas In 2:03
I’ve spent a lot of time recording, but I’m pretty sure this one takes the cake: thirteen months of studio time for two minutes and three seconds of song. That’s right. I’ve been tracking this bad boy for over a year, recording, re-recording, adding and subtracting, then tweaking each of the twenty-four tracks, nudging levels,…
Read MoreAin’t That America
It hasn’t been until pretty recently that I even began to consider “The American Dream.” I dunno’, maybe I was too young, too single, had nothing invested or at stake. The older I get, though, and the more historical storms I weather (September 11, The Invasion Of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, etc), the more I’ve come…
Read MoreOn The Air: KPTL’s Live From Studio C With Deeya
If you like hearing me talk then today’s your lucky day. As I told KPTL DJ Daniel Boseman after we wrapped our 45-minute interview, I’ve been the interviewer far more frequently than the interviewee. See, I talk a lot. Which, I know from all my years at The MTV, is not necessarily the best thing…
Read MoreOn The Air: KPTL’s Capital Backyard With Daniel Boseman
It’s been a whirlwind weekend here in Des Moines, Iowa. I got in Saturday around noon, registered for the Hy-Vee Tri, then taped two KPTL-FM Capitol 106.3 radio shows: Daniel Boseman’s Capitol Backyard, and Deeya’s Live from Studio C. I ran the tri Sunday morning in 2:48:27. Then the Authentic Records crew threw a hugely…
Read MoreBehind The Music: “Giving Up The Ghost”
I was standing on the 79th Street subway station just a few days prior to the release of “Heartland” in November, 2005, when the phrase “giving up the ghost” came to me. “Somehow,” as I wrote a few years later, “It summarized everything that I was (and still am) going through, specifically, letting go of…
Read MoreThough You Failed, At Least You Tried
I love this story. Colossally famous rock star (Tom Petty) reforms his middlingly-successful first band (Mudcrutch), rescuing at least one former band mate from the drudgery of teaching high school. “I just had this random thought,” Petty said. “‘I really liked that band, I wonder what it would be like to get them together?’” And…
Read MoreAmazing Grace – MP3
In U2’s “Pride (In The Name Of Love),” Bono sings, “Early morning, April 4 / A shot rings out in the Memphis sky.” Martin Luther King, Jr. was, in fact, assassinated at 6:01 pm on April 4, 1968 — forty years ago this very moment. Bono has since conceded his mistake, and expressed his dissatisfaction…
Read MoreWaiting At Graceland (First In Line) – MP3
“I ran down Elvis Presley Boulevard beneath a sky bruised purple and gray and orange at the edges,” I scribbled in a journal entry dated October 21, 1996. “It’s the type of sky that removes roofs indescriminently.” “It’s rumbling now, waiting to break, I’m sure, just as I step from the tour bus to the…
Read MoreLeap Year – MP3
I wrote “Leap Year” fifteen years ago, in the deep, dark winter of 1993. Syracuse winters were brutal. It’s nation’s snowiest metropolitan region, averaging 114.6 inches a year. I happened to be there for three of the top five worst years, the penultimate being the year in question in which 192.1 inches fell. That’s over…
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