Supergood Reality: 14th Street @AiOP 2012

October 9, 2012
Raquel de Anda makes art happen! When Alaina's college roomie moved to Brooklyn a few months ago, she was immediately integrated in numerous projects and coordinating art of all varieties. One of these is Art in Odd Places, an annual community art festival taking place all along 14th Street in Manhattan for 10 days, so I decided I would perform a sidewalk version of Supergood Reality. Since then, I have been visualizing what it would look like and considering infinite possibilities. Last night, it came alive! My Studio has been untethered! Into a "granny-cart" frame, I loaded a 12V battery,…

World Music NYC

June 6, 2012
I love to travel around the world, but sometimes I don't even need to leave New York City to get my fill of exotic culture. In the past two days, I have seen three amazing bands hailing from three distinctly different pockets of our planet. Dengue Fever is based in L.A. but features a Cambodian singer and rocks a sonic tribute to the Cambodian pop sound of the 1960's. It is deliciously funky and her voice is transcendent; the Cambodian lyrics are indecipherable but her ethereal voice adds a perfect alien element to the grooves. Sharing the same bill at…

The Great Googa Mooga

May 22, 2012
The Nethermead in Prospect Park is one of the most beautiful and amazing areas of this city and a perfect spot for a music festival. The 9th St. Bandshell is a wonderful music venue, of course, but The Nethermead is completely natural and out of sight to cars or buildings.  I had seen a Carribean festival there about 10 years ago, but nothing since, so when The Great Googa Mooga, a craft food, beer and wine music festival, was announced there, I was amped! I dutifully claimed my free tickets the moment they went on sale (80,000 sold out in…

Kraftwerk

April 17, 2012
I'm pretty sure I laughed when I first heard "The Robots" for the first time in 9th grade. It was... ridiculous. I had never heard anything like it before and it truly seemed like a parody, yet there was something ingenious about it that I couldn't quite comprehend. When I finally came around and really started listening to electronic music ten years later, it dawned on me that Kraftwerk were true pioneers and far ahead of their time. I saw them perform seven years ago and they absolutely blew my mind with a triptych of video projections at Hammerstein Ballroom,…

Annik

February 11, 2012
Last night was a delightful romp in room 3 of Radio Stars Karaoke in celebration of Annie and Erik's engagement. They met through mutual friends and made out for the first time in the dark corner of a karaoke room so it was appropriate that we would congregate in a similar studio and sing our faces off all night long. Singing together makes bonding stronger and we are lucky to have friends who appreciate this and love to let it out from time to time. I get to sing in my classes everyday, but singing karaoke brings out the real…

Buster Keaton and Guitars

January 18, 2012
Buster Keaton films are the very definition of classic; they are time machines to an era of simplicity and authenticity, and I am always struck by how real it all seems, despite the obvious ridiculousness of the plots and slapstick. This was filmmaking in its purest magic, before special effects became the attraction. It is the characters and the core of their actions, be they brutal physical comedy or tender facial expressions, that hold our attention and connect with an audience a century later. Thia week I attended two evenings of the New York Guitar Festival featuring seven Buster Keaton…

Open Your Eyes

October 26, 2011
Godot is an artist who creates some amazing stop-action videos with all sorts of different media. He is an innovator and an activist who craves social justice, using art to promote Supergoodness in all aspects of life. He is also my brother-in-law and I have been lucky to work with him, producing soundtracks for a number of his videos. Here is one that I recently collaborated on, with video shot in the art jungle of Berlin. Enjoy! Open Your Eyes

DJ

October 26, 2011
One of my favorite activities is playing DJ for a group of people interested in listening and maybe even dancing to the music I play. I love finding songs appropriate for any situation and sharing them with friends or strangers, who in turn provide feedback and requests, creating a playlist I could never have made on my own. It is as much about discovering music as it is about listening. Tonight I was asked to curate the sounds for Ars Nova, an amazing little theatre that always throws great parties. They are committed to stimulating new work and recognize the…

Music Alive

October 26, 2011
It has been a couple weeks of great musical entertainment for me. Wilco at Central Park Summerstage, Jon Brion at Le Poisson Rouge, and Deadmau5 at Roseland; all of them wonderfully different and uniquely fun. Wilco rocks as hard as any band with a rare restraint that pulls you forward as a listener. Jon Brion is the best musician I have ever seen, playing solo and recording drum, piano, glockenspiel, guitar and bass loops, building his songs with sweet harmony and jaw-dropping skill into some absolutely beautiful sonic collages. Deadmau5 is one of the biggest DJs in the world now…

Backtowork

September 20, 2011
The last two weeks have been a gentle ease-in to a precisely scheduled life as classes at various workplaces are starting on a rolling timetable. I expect my teaching capacities to be fully engaged and operational within the next week and look forward to a "rigorous" fall semester... But in the meantime I've had some free time which is almost completely monopolized by creative music production. Since spending a month without my studio, I have had a stream of rhythms and melodies pouring into my laptop and have condensed them into few songs which I offer here. Supergood music is…