The Most Iconic Performers I’ve Ever Seen Live
I’m getting old enough where I realize I might lose track of some of the great musicians I’ve seen in my day. So I’m starting a list:
Prince
Elvin Jones
Earth, Wind & Fire
Beyonce
B.B. King
Ray Brown
D’Angelo
Erykah Badu
The Roots
The Isley Brothers
Herbie Hancock (w/ Dave Holland & others)
Etta James
Kendrick Lamar
Outkast
A Tribe Called Quest
De La Soul
Levon Helm
Pinetop Perkins
Mos Def (Yasiin Bey)
Kanye West
Pearl Jam
Christian McBride
James Cotton
Ahmad Jamal
Ice Cube
Lauryn Hill
Caetono Veloso
INXS
Sleater-Kinney
Bruce Springsteen
Wu-Tang Clan
Soundgarden
Method Man and Redman
I’ve seen a lot of other shows, some of them incredibly amazing, but I think this is relatively complete for the super iconic ones.
The Perils of Leadership
I got together with the old side project Big Trouble on Thursday at The White Squirrel. Big Trouble spent a shaky decade playing pretty often. I think we formed around 2007. We never made a proper record, I think we only set foot in a studio once. When we had the money/energy to record we were more likely to connect with our favorite vocalist, Crescent Moon, for a session. Those sessions turned into pretty amazing recordings. Check them out here:
Playing songs you used to play all the time feels a certain way. It feels familiar, and it also brings you back to the spirits, good and bad that you had at that time. And it helps you realize how the years have changed you. When I was playing bass with Big Trouble, I was playing music all the time. 2-3 shows a week, probably averaging 2 rehearsals a week. Making albums, writing songs, practicing to some extent. I spent a lot of years where music was my main source of income and Big Trouble was a part of that bucket. So my fingers had this dexterity, my ears were perked up. But, the downside of playing lots of music is that at times I failed to bring the reverence for the process that music really deserves. One can be overloaded with music, going from gig to gig without the appreciation the music deserves.
I also could feel some of the negative sides of my youthful spirit at play on stage. I’ve spent time in most projects I run feeling like the other members de facto know I’m going to do a lot of the ambassadorial lifting for the band. I’m gonna pay the taxes, I’m gonna cut the checks, I’m gonna book the gigs, I’m gonna call the set. I’ve gotten to quite a good spot about that in Heiruspecs. And I should actually say we have, not I have. There is both more shared duties and a very modest recognition financially of some of the extra roles that I and Felix carry on. That feels like pretty good terrain. Doing these things for Big Trouble is harder. It’s harder cause it’s less active and because my brother is in the band. I don’t even know how to explain it to somebody who doesn’t have a brother, but doing some kind of creative and business pursuit with a casual leadership model and your brother is involved, it’s complicated. It’s not even bad, it’s just complicated. And I can feel all my youthful tension inside my middle aged body while I’m trying to also respond to the moment musically. Different than I could’ve before, I was able to let that tension exist, look at it, and continue to explore it and the things surrounding it.
There’s a bigger question in these struggles, if you’re kind of the leader dude, what do you do? Do you embrace that? Do you force yourself out of that role? When are you being a good leader? And when are you being the extrovert white dude asking and answering every question? And when in my life has my willingness to be a leader actually been because I knew I couldn’t be a good worker bee? I’ve struggled with bad pitch as a musician. I’ve had bad practice techniques between rehearsals. I jumped on being a leader because it was in my comfort zone. Sing a third above you? Probably not! Talk to the irritable sound guy who hates rap? I got you. Transcribe that strange chord progression? I’ll try! Book an East Coast tour, I got you. I spent so much of my twenties pretending that I was just spectacular. I spent so much time bossing other people around when i should’ve looked inward to work on my craft, to humbly invest time in trying to be great. When Heiruspecs got to a certain level of fame I thought the only work I should do is get us to the next level by muscle. I never thought I could help get us to the next level by me making myself better as a bassist. I still practiced, but I don’t think my spirit was in improvement. I thought I could do my best work as a project manager. And maybe that’s true, but I project managed at the expense of actually working on the project. And I want to fix that, I want the next decades of my life to be aligned differently. I think that’s partially why I’ve been pretty resistant to working management in my radio career. It’s also not like I’ve been offered a bunch of management gigs and turned them down, it’s just not something I’m angling to do.
I want to fundamentally embrace the challenge of being better at the craft of being a radio DJ and music director. I don’t want to focus on pointing fingers, planning campaigns. I want to deliver excellent interviews, provide opportunities for folks who listen to Jazz88 to fall in deeper with the music we play, to feel compelled to take in a show, to buy a record, to recommend an artist because they feel a deeper connection to the music. I want to program the music in such a way that someone who is a casual listener of jazz goes deeper, finds new favorites, gets engaged with the music. And I want to give the type of experiences that I think the best Music Directors and DJs do, they make their cities better, not just cooler, better. It becomes a better city to start a band in, it becomes a better city to do a benefit in, it becomes a better city to be young in. It becomes a better city to be old in. I want to bring that all in. And I don’t want the fact that my career is off to a good start stand in the way of me bringing it to a great end.
Managing and fancying yourself a manager is a challenging place to be. I don’t think I’ve always done it well and I don’t think I’ve always done it for the right reasons. The next time I approach that work, I want to change somethings about how I do it.
Cucumber Library.
The Diamond Sea, A Merman I Should Turn To Be
The magical long rock song is an elusive thing. A lot of times it’s just a short rock song built wrong, with a half idea stretched too thin. A Chet Holmgren of a rock song. When I’m talking “long” I’m talking over ten minutes. Something that is over ten minutes is kind of by definition epic, but I don’t want a song that is “Bohemian Rhapsody” with another four minutes of fanfare sewn on. I want something that is more patient and is not epic in a narrative way. I want something that is epic that way a mountain is, by dint of majesty. Now that we’ve established that, here are the three best long rock songs of all time.
Jimi Hendrix - 1983. . .A Merman I Should Turn To Be
It’s the drum fills, it’s the intimacy. How do you make a song about a cursed future without sounding kind of like a pompous science fiction vibe? Jimi did it on this song. In one of my proudest moments on the radio I played this late into the night on a Saturday on the Current and encouraged everyone to turn off the lights and crank up the speakers with me. I’ve spoken to a couple people who did it. . .we all had an amazing time.
Sonic Youth - The Diamond Sea
This song is so close to being bad. It is a dirge, it is repetitive, I feel like Thurston Moore’s lyrics are just on the edge of being overly precious. But the totality of the song, the impact of the noisy parts, it adds up to something.
Television - Marquee Moon
I can’t really say if this song plays by any of the rules I talked about above. What I do know is that this is one of the best ways to spend ten minutes. As you come around every corner there is a feeling of each part meaning more, earning more attention and study. The writing of this song and the revelation of this song. I can’t point to many songs that laid the groundwork for some shit like this. What is the song that isn’t Marquee Moon from before Marquee Moon that sounds remotely like Marquee Moon? I can’t point to one.
Why I Want to Own a Liquor Store
Me by Brenna
Once the big record hits with Heiruspecs and I make my millions I want to own a liquor store. I’d play great radio stations, I’d play great records. I’d carry significantly less wine than most of these spots carry nowadays. That’s too much wine and you know it.
I think I’d like to stand around a liquor store and listen to records and sell people alcohol. There are so many things that might not be perfect about this situation. Running a business is hard. I don’t know anything about liquor. When I’m old will I want to stand up all day? My old roommate worked at Big Top and she said it was really hard to sell people liquor who she knew would be back later in the day for another little bottle.
But I have this strong feeling that I don’t want to do “knowledge work” cause it sounds like it is already terrible and getting more terrible. When I finish DJing I feel like I did a thing and that thing is done. There’s more work to go, there’s something else to do, but a couple hours of radio were crafted and delivered by me. I find that satisfying. It scratches a lot of the same itches that playing a live show does to be honest with you.
Frankly, I think it’ll take a lot to pull me away from DJing on the radio. I really love it, I feel quite talented on it and I think I can meet some of my larger life goals while doing this work. But if you want to sell me a liquor store, slide in the contact form my friends.
Long Live the New Twin Cities, Long Live Old Saint Paul
COVID is chasing my family. I caught COVID in Seattle at the beginning of August. Miraculously, none of my family caught it. Then, we bring the kids back to daycare and we find out on day one that our youngest had an exposure so she’s out for the rest of the week. This is a long way of saying I’ve been taking a lot of long walks lately which is what you do when the weather is nice and you can’t go to things as easily. I took both of my daughters down to the greatest park in the universe, Mattocks Park in St. Paul. Don’t tell anyone about it please, it’s perfect.
When you walk back to my house from Mattocks Park you get to see a nice slice of New St. Paul. First let’s go back at get some definitions.
There’s an exciting group of media professionals led by a guy named Fresh that work under the name Motivation to Hustle. Best place to follow them is Instagram. They share new artists, they share hilarious traffic interactions, they call out BS in the Twin Cities. The term they’ve coined and I’ve embraced is the “New Twin Cities”. I think this phrase can mean a lot of things but I take it to mean a more representative celebration of the Twin Cities. I’ve spent plenty of years living in and seeing a different Twin Cities than I was ever able to read about in major publications or here represented on the radio. To me “The New Twin Cities” celebrates the idea of actually celebrating, amplifying, and monetizing the truly diverse metro area we are. So, I love the phrase the New Twin Cities and I love Motivation to Hustle. Let me tell you what I love even more. . .old St. Paul.
There may be no better representation of old St. Paul than the yard behind Spyhouse at the corner of Palace and Snelling. Let’s cover some things.
It’s kind of a coup that Spyhouse is in St. Paul at all - I think of Spyhouse as specializing in coffee in fancy neighborhoods for fancy people who have 24-inch MacBooks and rode to the coffeeshop on a $1,000 bike while wearing a blazer. I believe Spyhouse in St. Paul replaced an antique shop that was open maybe twelve hours a week total. That place was old St. Paul. Spyhouse is all sorts of new St. Paul. It’s filled everyday with people I never see otherwise in my neighborhood, $500 eyeglasses, dogs that look like they have last names and wills, sandals with a single strap that seems to float above the toes et cetera. More power to them (and even more power to the dedicated employees who attempted to unionize Spyhouse). But here’s the great thing; the Spyhouse yard is a war between new St. Paul and old St. Paul and old St. Paul has won.
If you head to the backyard of Spyhouse what you are going to see is a beautiful angular, dark wood patio that occupies let’s say 44% of the grassy area. It is comfortably appointed with bolted down furniture that can accommodate skinny people drinking espressos while talking about “ideation”. It’s beautiful and the people who hang out there are beautiful. I’ve sat there, it feels spectacular, I felt beautiful.
Occupying the other 56% of the yard is presumably the domain of one of the renters who lives above Spyhouse. For years this backyard has belonged to this lady and she could give exactly zero shits that there is now a fancy coffeeshop taking up some of her real estate. She has one iron-wrought table out there with a couple of those iron-wrought chairs and the grand majority of weekend days you can find this sun-kissed early 40s blond sitting out there with a 72 oz. cup full of ice that is melting something, a hard pack of cigarettes with a lighter perched atop, and a full serving of “fuck off today is my day off and I’m smoking these cigarettes”. I LOVE HER AND EVERYTHING SHE STANDS FOR. Here’s why I love her:
she is the actual greener grass.
When I walk up Palace en route to Mattocks Park I first see the hipsters, the parking of bikes, the saucers, the full charged iphones sitting on notebooks with charcoal pencils. I think to myself, that’s the life, that’s what I need. I bet if I use that planning software I downloaded I’d truly be happy.
AND THEN I SEE MY SUNKISSED OLD ST. PAUL GODDESS and I think “screw you Koffeeboi, this is the life, catching a sunburn in the 55105, playing Thin Lizzy off of a cracked screen iphone from a free Spotify account while pulling on a couple Spirits before heading to Costco for reinforcements for the week ahead.”
Dear Snelling Ave Sun Goddess,
I love you, I want to spend my life at that table with you slightly irritating the hipsters. Can I bum a smoke? Can we spend eternity together. Can I borrow your lighter?
N.B. - If you are looking for the Old St. Paul coffeeshop in the neighborhood in humbly submit J&S Coffee on Randolph and Saratoga. Do they still sell CDs from local artists? Do musicians sometimes play shows there? Are there picture of people holding bags of J&S Coffee all over God’s Green Earth? Is the coffee incredible? Does a dude named Dakota work there who my daughter is obsessed with? The answer to all these questions are a definitive yes.
Now that we’ve established Old St. Paul let me tell you some of the Old St. Paul highlights of my life:
I was with a woman who tried to order a Budweiser at a brewery in St. Paul. Amazing.
I adore everyone who will not entertain the possibility of any better burger in the universe than the Nook. Old St. Paul
We have a grocery store in the neighborhood called Oxendale’s. Until maybe 2019 it was called Korte’s. If you’re new St. Paul you don’t even shop there, you go to Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s if you have to. But if you have to utter the name of the grocery store you call it Oxendale’s. If you’re St. Paul you call it Korte’s. IF YOU ARE OLD ST. PAUL you call it Knowlan’s which is what is was called when I was in high school.
Old St. Paul doesn’t call it Ayd Mill Road, they call it the Short-line.
Martin Devaney’s dad is old St. Paul, he crosses himself when he goes into Minneapolis
I was with a dude who tried to order a whiskey-diet at a brewery in St. Paul. Also amazing.
If you see Betsy Hodges, Mayor Frey or any other Minneapolis mayor they are always doing something to be noticed. They are doing the electric slide poorly, or fake scooping food at a soup kitchen with a ring light next to them. One time I saw St. Paul mayor Chris Coleman just demolishing a plate of fried rice from Lee’s Express by himself at a random table in the skyway. Old St. Paul. I wonder if he wrote that off. Probably not. Old St. Paul.
If you’re old St. Paul you first park where the Cheapo used to be and then risk your god damn life crossing all four lanes of Snelling to get some record you wanted
If you’re old St. Paul you are still amazed at the route changes for the 21 that they introduced legitimately 10 years ago
If you’re old St. Paul none of your favorite places to see movies are still open.
If you’re old St. Paul you are unironically excited about meat raffles
Long live the New Twin Cities. Long live Old St. Paul and long live the suns out guns out goddess of the Spyhouse backyard.
It’s Hard to Find a Friend
Erick Anderson - Aka AfroKeys at the Blues Saloon 08/16/22
It’s hard to make friends period end of paragraph. It’s hard to find a friend is also a great record.
It’s harder to make friends when you’re grown up. I do think it’s harder for men to make friends with men. It’s harder to make friends once you got kids unless you make friends with the other people that have kids your age. And it’s a grand coincidence when you like the people your kids go to school with, it happens, but it’s a grand coincidence.
By my count I’ve made about five serious friends since having kids who aren’t also my neighbors or friends I met through daycare. One of those friends is Erick Anderson aka Afrokeys. I got to step out and celebrate Erick’s birthday last night and see him in his element, playing incredible keyboard. It warmed my heart.
We’re St. Paul musicians a certain age so we’ve crossed paths in small ways for years. We even played a couple gigs back together in maybe 2010-2012 both with Dessa and with my solo project. But we weren’t friends. In the early pandemic the universe brought us together. Basketball brought us together. Agreeing that a big national tour of Sam Cooke’s music curated and led by Har Mar Superstar was a problematic venture brought us together. And we were living blocks apart from one another for much of the pandemic. We slipped into some kind of rhythm where a fair amount of Friday nights turned into a bonfire gathering in my backyard. We had a nice rotating cast; neighbors, members of Heiruspecs, Nina Moini and a couple other folks. It felt like a little bonfire salon where a lot of people peed outside due to COVID cautions.
But some nights it was just Erick and I. And we’d listen to different records, or different radio stations and talk about different things with varying levels of seriousness. Adulthood struggles, parenting struggles, adulthood joys, parenting joys. We started playing ping-pong once I got a ping-pong table. I believe I beat him enough at ping-pong that he encouraged me to play pickleball where he routinely kicks my ass. My last night on The Current I was on until midnight and there was a snow storm. Erick and his girlfriend Camolly were one of few people nice enough to make the trek out and raise a glass. I bet this sounds wildly mundane to you. Middle age dudes doing middle age things. But, something about the friendship being at the center of it is what I love. We are only loosely in the same “circle”, we’ve both done a lot of hip-hop music, but we don’t share a group of close friends. We didn’t meet through our kids or through our partners. We don’t run into each other. But we go out of our way to hang, to play pickleball, to get some drinks, to go out to each other’s birthdays.
I spent most of my driving time yesterday listening to a podcast from the Ezra Klein show (he had a sub host, Roge Karma). It was maddening. It was about working from home, the end of the office, the monitored “knowledge” worker. I found the podcast interesting and I became grateful for so many aspects of my job. I thought I wanted to be one of the latte fancy folks using fifteen types of software to better organize the parameters of what the locus of the organization is. I don’t. I want dirty hands from picking records, playing bass and passing out trivia sheets. I don’t feel monitored minute by minute here at Jazz88. I feel like there are very high expectations placed on me to modernize and streamline how we discover, feature and promote new music. There are expectations for me to improve ratings and I can imagine catching an earful if ratings took a nosedive. This is a long way of saying, I will be judged by my results here at Jazz88. Do listeners appreciate the new music we are presenting? Are people continuing to listen to the radio in the afternoon? As the music director are you connecting with artists and labels and establishing a good network in the jazz world? These inquiries that are focused results mean that from minute to minute I feel free to do my work in the way that fits me. I love what I do, I think I do a damn good job at it. If the results say otherwise, I can work with that, I can change based on that rubric. But if my employer was measuring keystrokes, stuffing the calendar with meaningless meetings cause it looks good. . .I’d lose it. I don’t get paid per word, I don’t get paid per post. I get paid to make a great product, whether it be our music library, our label relations or my hosting on the Afternoon Cruise. What a lot of knowledge workers do is B.S. And it’s not that they themselves are B.S., it’s that the system is. They have to masquerade around with empty meetings and stack up mountains of inefficient hours. They do that to feed a system that requires it. I don’t bring much work home. I listen to Jazz88 and other radio stations all the time, I pursue new music, I think about how to synthesize my experiences as a music lover, musician and human being into good moments on the radio. But if you send an email to me at 10pm you’re getting a response the next day. I want my life. I want my children to see me. I’ve got a job where I miss their early evening hours, setting the table, walking the dog, doing a project, maybe practicing the clarinet. I miss all that. When I do get home I don’t want to have my nose in my inbox. I want to live a life that includes work without excluding the rest of life. I’ve gotten better work/life balance during the pandemic and it sounds like a lot of you haven’t. But my journey towards living a life outside of work started before 2020. One person that got me off the workaholic program was Radio Man Brian Oake. He came into the Current with such impressive work credentials I figured he was a work-all-the-time-guy but he made it very clear that he had some pretty firm borders. He didn’t have work email on his phone, he wasn’t defined by his job. It was impressive to see somebody who is so definitively RADIO MAN in this town not be defined by it himself. It inspired me to know that one needs a friend group, an identity, a passion that exists outside of your workplace.
There was a really important part of the podcast; the host asked about workers who will miss going into the office because they want to see their friends, they want to have human connection. This is a reasonable concern but one of the guests pointed out, “that’s not what jobs are! Jobs are transactional”. I’m an entrepreneur, I own a business, I do want Trivia Mafia to be more than just a blood sucking business. When we have kickball leagues and holiday parties it’s because I DON’T want Trivia Mafia to be purely transactional. I want people to be paid fairly for their work and I want them to be also treated as awesome friends who deserve parties and kickball. But, work is fundamentally transactional. You should have a life outside of work. And it sounds like a lot of people don’t. I’ve got a demanding job that doesn’t eat up every waking hour of my life. I have time for friends, I have time for bonfires, I have time for some travel, I have time for my children, I have time for my neighbor, I have time for pickleball, I have time to make a blog. It shouldn’t be, but this is uncommon. I’m glad in this world I’ve made time for friends and my friends have made time for me. I don’t think it’s healthy to just see the people you work with and your family. And I think that podcast is right, it’s not your job’s job to make sure you have a social life. . .they can help, but if they are your answer to all non familial contact, that’s on you.
It’s hard to make a friend. It’s hard to keep a friend. It’s hard to do that in Minnesota cause according to recent arrivals, nobody every reaches out for the second time. It’s hard to do friendship in 2022. But I’m thankful for my friends and I’m glad I got to see Erick behind the organ last night on his birthday.
Good For My Body, Good for Your Body
Clockwise from left: Tasha, Me (Alexei in the back), Heiruspecs, Heiruspecs with a random, Me. All 2003.
Today in therapy we spoke about photos of ourselves, about how we relate to our body and how we present our body. Especially how we present our bodies on stages and in public. I have unique feelings about this. I am a white man from a notably white part of the country, Western Massachusetts. I didn’t see a lot of people dancing growing up. I didn’t see a lot of people expressing themselves with their bodies. I didn’t see a lot of people engaging with their bodies or other people’s bodies. It was a physically distant place.
I started to feel something different when I got comfortable playing with Heiruspecs. I felt a freedom on stage that was nothing I had ever felt before. I felt a freedom to move my body and to let the energy I felt for the music come through my fingers but also through my legs, through my face, through my arms, through my whole body. I felt an ability to send my emotions out to the world through my body. It felt freeing, it felt revolutionary, it felt sexual and it felt sexy. And I felt special doing it being fat. We ask fat people to keep their bodies quiet. My best friend’s on Earth will say “I don’t even really think of you as a fat person”. We’ve made that verboten to say for black folks; it isn’t a compliment to tell black friends that you don’t even consider them black. But we agree that the ultimate goal for a fat person is to transcend fatness. But on stage with Heiruspecs I felt I was forcing my fatness, my talent, my charisma, my sexy into the space. It was all a part of what I was expressing. That felt powerful, to not be apologizing for my size, to not be hoping it would go unnoticed. Notice it, love it, and dance with me. Dance with us. Dance with this energy we have. This was good for my body, this was good for my soul. I don’t get to be in that space very much anymore, a couple Heiruspecs shows a year and your mind is different when you are dusting off the bass for the first time in months, I’m using different muscles, I”m thinking about different thing.
The overarching work I’m doing with my therapist is about blame. I have a lot of blame issues, they go way back. Everything I’m working on goes way back. I’m a scorekeeper. I’m a get even guy. I’m a definitely don’t forget and probably don’t forgive guy. That’s served me in the past but it doesn’t serve me now. Not everything gets a ledger line, you can’t titrate karma. And I know that this scorekeeping has done tremendous damage to my soul, to my body. In our touring days I was an evangelist for something more elevated than blame, something that raised me and hopefully our audiences above that self-doubt, that self-critique. There was something bulletproof about the magic we had on stage and my body was an ingredient in that magic. But it wasn’t just goodness in that magic.
For the first time in my life I’m not taking the good with the bad wholesale. There was something magic there, but I was vindictive, I was impossibly overbearing, I was controlling, I wasn’t living my best life. And I can keep the good in, take the bad out. I can titrate my formulas, I can find better paths. Paths that let the hard times wash over me without me finding someone to blame, so often finding it to be me or my wife.
But right now I think about how good that time with Heiruspecs was for my body. Finding a new way to show my emotions. Finding a new way to show myself. Showing the small but dedicated group of people who like Heiruspecs that a young, fat man could talk through his body, could share his spirit with his movements. It’s a line of communication that goes so unused by so many and I’m glad I used it, I’m glad I found it and I want to dance again.
Easing into Kindergarten in Stages
Sadie Levitt McPherson
Today marks the first day of kindergarten camp for my oldest daughter Sadie. One week half days, a dry run for what is coming in September. I tried to explain to Sadie how different the world was when I started kindergarten, in 1986. My mom cried when I went to kindergarten and I didn’t understand why. I assumed she would be happy I would be gone more. And that wasn’t pure hyperbole, my mom brought a lot of negative energy into that era of my childhood. It would stand to reason that less of me would be good news for her. But little stands to reason about how a parent feels when their children make a life transition. I think my mother cried cause her youngest was getting older, no matter how much I bothered her I was growing up and there’s something worth crying about there. And now my oldest is getting older. She’s relating to the world different. She has that inspiring combination of curiosity and courage that is stretching its arms as wide as possible to cover up some justified fear. That fear that comes from your world changing. But more than the fear she’s bringing in that opportunity to take on the trappings of the older kids. The backpack, the lunchpack, her own markers, her own things, her own projects. It scares me, it stuns me. She has this authority to engineer a moment. In the picture above you see her standing proudly next to a fire. It was her idea, her sweat equity, her multiple marshmallow snacks.
Childhood is turbulent. Childhood is transitions. Childhood is tears. Childhood is false starts. Childhood is fake friends. But childhood is yours and contrary to what my heart feels sometimes, the world is not going to squeeze out your fascination, your willingness to love hard, to care, to cry, to propose a fire party. The world didn’t squeeze it out of me, out of your mother, out of my mother. Adulthood will change us all, it changed me. But the way the world looks to you right now is often how it still looks to me; like a huge mystery, with things that I understand playing in harmony with things that completely elude me. There is a magic in holding hands with my daughter as she navigates what’s next, as she also completely exists in what is right now. I have no deep desire to protect her from anything but danger. I will protect her from things she needs no protection, I will send her headlong into things she should be shielded from, but she will crash into the walls, break the rules, build something and roast a perpetually-about-to-fall-into-the-fucking-fire marshmallow above the embers and ask her daddy if she can have another and I will say yes.
Streaming Thoughts Back From Vacation
I told Tidal that I wanted to hear the greatest song in Fiona Apple’s catalog which is “I Know”, the closing track from the album When the Pawn.
Once we sent Tidal shuffling from that it was unbelievably sad shit. Right now I am hearing the longest story I’ve ever heard Phoebe Bridgers, it’s something about a prison graveyard. But I hit Elliott Smith, Ben Folds Five (Brick), Sarah Mclachlan, Feist and more. But now I have all sorts of questions I’d like to ask you, frankly not that rhetorically:
Do you hear a similarity between DJ Premier and Elliott Smith? They exert this control over their songs where every single detail sounds so. . .THEM! DJ Premier breathes so much of him into songs that start from samples, it is absolutely stunning. And Elliott Smith, it’s never a normal chord, it’s never a normal melody shape. Yet it never sounds forced. To me he’s one of those ones that just hears music different. Another artist who I think delivers that, Thao, from Thao and the Get Down Stay Down. I had the joy of seeing Thao play at the KEXP 50 Year anniversary celebration in Seattle this weekend.
Here are my questions about Brick. The “she” in Brick is his girlfriend, not the fetus correct. Rachel says it definitely is about the girlfriend. And does Ben intimate in pre chorus two that it’s not him who wants the abortion? Does their relationship break down and thus the abortion is the right move? Or does the abortion cause the end of their relationship? And if she has her own apartment, why are they afraid of being “found out” by her parents and glad they’re going to Charlotte? Rachel agrees it’s because it’s the day after Christmas, the parents are all up in their business. I think that makes sense.
Do you know that Sarah Mclachlan made a song with DMC? I discovered this when I reviewed DMC’s biography for the Current. So when Sarah McLachlan comes on I start to think about RUN-DMC. That honestly seems to be a group where there is NO consensus about who the most important member is. Or more accurately, I think there is critical consensus that the most important member is Jam Master Jay. But I thought it was a settled fact that Run was the bigger deal as an emcee. But I’ve had so many people point out that on so many points DMC is the HIGHLIGHT of the song. Run might do more lifting, but DMC does more heavy lifting. And DMC’s voice is the band, it’s the iconic. But I also believe that Run is one of the most electric front people in any genre, ever. He is also a front person for the MTV generation, the moments I know from him are the videos, not the actual live shows. He’s got something.
Have you listened to the song “Too Many Birds” with great friends in Minneapolis after playing cards and sharing songs all night? You simply must. Press play on this and find the song that the journey should start from, if it ends at this.
The song is just pure majesty. There’s no changes. It’s one part. It’s pure build. It’s pure blunt force of an idea you never had “too many birds” just delivered a bunch of times, teasing different things, a breaking ball, a fastball, a patience. There is something beyond songcraft here, which makes it the best songcraft there is. Sometimes artists don’t leave any coffee stains in their lyrics, they sanitize it, they maximize it. Everything is workshopped, everything is polished. And this is where I have to diverge from the idea that it all needs to be brought into the clarity that helps it shine the best. Sometimes I want a matte finish lyric, sometimes I want a baby sloppy thing. I’m deep into reading this amazing Dilla book by Dan Charnas. By the way, Dan Charnas simply doesn’t miss. He wrote a book about money in hip-hop. He wrote a book about Working Clean (Mise-En-Place for office workers). And now he wrote this Dilla book. And it ACTUALLY talks about the music. It paints a portrait of Dilla as an artist but it also talks about the 16th notes, and it does that lovingly. I hate when people act like music isn’t magic. Like music can simply explained. Like this isn’t something that can be fully quantified or quantized. There is something magical about music and if you don’t know that, I don’t know how it can be worth it to be a part of the industry, cause there’s no real perk besides being closer to the magic. Maybe every once in awhile, maybe you’re the magic. Maybe that day, you delivered the important part, but most days you are just doing your part. Dilla might be shoving snares backwards on the grid, he might be shaping the chord progression himself, he’s making the magic. But someday the part you’re playing is putting a Pharcyde song on at the liquor store you work. Maybe that’s what you did for the magic. But if you didn’t do anything for the magic, you aren’t doing it right. Thanks for the magic ones.
5. Do you know who can write his ass off? Howard Bryant! I’ve never read his stuff, just listened to him on Bomani Jones’ podcast. He’s always electrifying as a guest, encyclopediactic with the information and stats, but on top of that, these explanations, these connections and this ability to use exactly the right turn of phrase. Well Howard Bryant does that in his new work “Rickey”. Listen, the way he captures these 1980s baseball terms and turns of phrase that literally sit at the absolute back of my head, six years old, dad folding laundry for 3 hours, a game on and me asking questions incessantly about the game. Him explaining most of it, admitting when he didn’t quite get it, and generally just watching my brother also start to dance around baseball. I’m born in ‘81, I’m one of the last baseball kids in the sense of baseball being the biggest sport in America. If you’re 25 it’s been football your whole life. Interesting. Well these stories of Rickey Henderson in the 1980s are amazing. And thankfully, it’s not one of those things where it is just a collection of one off anecdote books. The most breathtaking writing is only distantly about basketball. Howard Bryant takes maybe 35 pages to just deliver a history of Oakland, which is the history of segregation, it is a tale of a crucible of middle school talent pulled from all over the American South now located inside a very small geographic range. And the way he contracts and expands from government states to single impressions from side players who have a slight connection to Oakland. It stretches the story so the canvas is clearly covering something more than Rickey Henderson. It’s always those books that do a bigger job than they say they will. Need to understand the 60s not exclusively from the over published flower power thinkers. . .my go to is Taylor Branch’s three volume Martin Luther King Jr. series. BOOK 1 BOOK 2 BOOK 3.
6. What musical group or artist has the most misleading hit singles, that are the most criminally unrepresentative of what their body of work really is?
7. Release and tour wise, what’s been the best year in music since you’ve been 16 years old?
8. I got a dear friend named Stone Blake who turned me onto “Smokey in LA” era Smokey Robinson. Okay wow, I had this man down wrong. I thought of Smokey as having a dimmer second half of his career. That might be true in raw influence, but as far as output he remained relevant, bankable and multi-talented. The tune I’m liking right now “Let Me Be The Clock”.
That’s all I got for now. Shoot those responses to s@heiruspecs.com
Bringing Good Energy
There are many horrible things happening in your backyard and all around the Earth right now. Your time, money, energy and concern can help alleviate some of that stress. It is always a good time to volunteer time and/or money towards pushing the world in the direction that you think is best.
But when you have determined at what level you can commit to that, it’s also time to try and give yourself good moments. Cook good food, work a job you love, masturbate, spend time with friends, read a book, make a song, make something that will last. This blog exists cause I don’t want to give all of my brain to twitter. I spent the morning listening to a podcast that was sending home the point that the medium we choose to communicate in dictates so much of what we say. And what we say on twitter is often just bait for a reaction. I’m here on this blog to share freely, to share slowly, to share in my own way. I would love to be able to comfortably do home maintenance and make my home life more beautiful, but I’m also creating words here that I hope I can look back on with a feeling that I made something that makes me smile, that helps me understand me, and might let readers feel some connection with. That’s a special thing. The podcast I was listening to is the latest from Ezra Klein.
The most inspiring podcast I’ve listened to lately is from Open Mike Eagle and Psalm One. I’ve known Open Mike Eagle and Psalm for quite some time. I guess I’ve known Psalm for about 18 years and Mike for maybe 10 or 12. Not close with either of them. But hearing not only about their journeys as rap artists, but their humanness as rap artists was pretty. . .affirming? I wanted to type inspiring but I guess in a weird sense it’s the opposite. I was affirmed to find out they too are petty, they too struggle with comparing themselves to the next artist, they too hit dry spells, they too need to slow down. These are artists where their recorded catalog gives us a sense that they are not super heroes, but something about hearing these two age mates and at times collaborators discuss their lives was a beautiful experience. I feel like Open Mike Eagle makes podcasts that only I care about, but the numbers make it clear that thousands of people also care about them.
Bring yourself joy, combat the bad things in the world, both in your neighborhood, in your city and internationally. But bring joy, put good music in your headphones and dive in, sleep enough, go to therapy and do what is best for you. And listen to podcasts, it’s the best media technology to come out since my birth (1981). Yes, even better than blogs on pink backgrounds.
Let’s Go On a Weekend Holiday
7/23/22
I woke up reminded that I had gone to bed uncharacteristically early and sober for a Friday night. I tend to pack a lot of living into my Fridays, perhaps an outgrowth of formerly working on Saturday and Sunday nights. But this week I was focused on getting a solid night of sleep and being all in for a first purposeful daddy/daughter exclusive trip with my five year old Sadie.
After the usual uphill push to get the dog walked on a Saturday morning me and Sadie shoved off for Mille Lacs circa 9:15am. A five-year old has the capacity to plan, to fret, to analyze, to anticipate. So I know I don’t have a captive audience in the back of the Volvo, we have a schedule and snack commitments to keep to to maximize in the water time.
Now I know it’s going to be a rainy day, but honestly, rain doesn’t change plans. It might ruin a planned pool trip, but if this is your day to go up North, then it’s your day to go up North. We start off the day listening to Jessica Paxton doing Teenage Kicks on the Current. As I’m listening to this “Swan Swan H” tune by R.E.M. I am thinking “I am barely generationally connected to this music, what must this feel like to my daughter, a foreign language?”. At this very moment she requests that we listen to “Down by The Water” by the Decemberists. And that means Sadie is really aware, Peter Buck plays guitar on both of those songs. The Decemberists are really into their R.E.M. sound on that tune. I’m elated Sadie is connected musical dots and I’m fine to start playing tunes for her from Tidal.
I lost my picking music steam and we flipped over to KVSC out of St. Cloud which never fails to bring me joy when I flip it on. Pro-gear, pro-attitude, college energy. A dude (Justin?) couldn’t get a technology thing to work this morning and he handled it so well. Made a joke, kept it moving, got it working.
We stopped at a Target near Elk River. My shopping list was a hits list of “where the fuck is this located??” type items: sunblock, bug spray, life jacket and some shoes. We found the stuff but this was one of those bizarro Targets where the grocery stuff is on the left at which point you might as well just “Fuck You Pal It’s Your First Time at Target” sign outside. The guy at the register wore an N-95 and I promptly felt like a jerk for not wearing a mask.
We did a lot of Jojo Siwa in the car. That’s my daughters favorite. But we also rocked the Power Loon. Do you know about the Power Loon? The minute I turned it on it was “Breakdown” by Tom Petty and it was on. Also, I heard a tune I had never heard by Journey (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFqXFE8OSG4) called Stone in Love. Well that song is amazing. I also caught a Billy Squier tune called “My Kinda Lover”. I think I had heard that before, but it floored me.
The next stop was the resort where I had bought the last hotel room available which Rachel thought I spent too much money on. Yes, she’s right. It was $250 for one night. It’s also July in Mille Lacs and I’m not camping alone with a five year old, I don’t have those skills yet. And if I was camping, I sure as shit wouldn’t be blogging in air conditioned bliss eating Trader Joe peanut butter pretzel bites. In the end, I’m glad we were at the fancy place. The pool was legit. And the restaurant had two older musicians playing country music quietly. If our $250 King Suite paid for those folks to play some good music, great for me.
We get to the resort and I have to pee with a blinding intensity I only discover as I stand up. That’s the best thing about being in your forties with young kids. You stand up and your body screams “EJECT THIS URINE FROM HOTEL PENIS ASAP” and your life screams “two kids, two car seats, three backpacks, don’t forget the water bottle, you might as well pee your pants bruh”.
We walk into the hotel and of course there isn’t an obvious bathroom. Usually it’s right next to the lobby. Nope. It’s all hotel rooms on the first floor. So I’m just holding it and I’m behind one of the worse archetypes to be behind in a “have-to-piss-so-bad-i’m humming and tapping” situation. . .BROCHURES and QUESTIONS man! I absolutely hated to see it. He was leaning back, asking about fishing prices, check out times, and he was asking about enough dates that it was clear he was just a guy doing research for a trip in the very near future. I considered butting in and asking where the bathroom was, but I just didn’t think anyone would understand the position they were putting me in. When Captain Brochure finally wrapped up he only slid over a little and for a minute I thought I wasn’t going to get served at that moment. The disinterested midday high school-age hotel agent got me to the basement bathroom and also let me know it was kind of rich for me to be trying to check into a room at like 11:44am. Understood sir, I kind of wish I had peed my pants in your lobby.
Umbrella in hand, rain largely under control, Sadie and I made our rounds and I was reminded of the newness of the world to Sadie; “that’s an amazing rock” “these birds are not ordinary” “that waterfall is worth a visit”.
It was time for lunch and the lunch spot was closed at the resort. Good for me, we can drive to Garrison and I can remember the most important cabin of my 20s, Bill Caperton’s parents cabin just outside of Garrison. Ate at the Spotlite Cafe. I got the shrimp basket, Sadie got the French toast. The “you get a salad with your entree” culture is strong up by Mille Lacs. But the salad itself wasn’t.
The head waitress Dan Quayle'd potatoe on the specials board when she updated it for a grilled ham and cheese with choice of potatoe. Potato was spelled properly on the homemade potato salad. Towards the end of our meal together a mother/daughter came in. Mom maybe 40s/50s, daughter late teens/20s. Daughter only had one arm, a thing you notice, but you don’t think about much after that. But, Mom (didn’t catch her name) and Olivia started making small talk with us (the small talk comes easy with a cute kid, especially if you’re a dad, it is still thought of miraculous to see dad’s doing anything resembling parenting in public). Olivia lost her arm in a terrible car accident while in basic training for the Marines in 2016. She made it sound like having formerly been in the Marines is her job now in a sense. They have her on disability, as well the fuck they should, they took her arm. They “retired” her. That’s her words. I don’t know what that means. But that made me think, a woman a generation younger than me, sacrificing more of herself for our country than I ever had. And now she’s pulling down a bacon cheeseburger in Garrison saying that she used to be a Marine. What are the next thirty years like for her? What are the next thirty years like for anyone? Are the Marines compelled to pay her. . .but not compelled to give her meaningful work? I know nothing.
We drive back to the hotel and my mind is full of my memories of Bill’s cabin. I remember almost running out of gas in Kevin’s car one late Friday night on the way up. Playing soccer with a large group of people but primarily just rough housing down at one corner of the field with my ex-girlfriend Anna cause we were so mad at each other about everything. The crazy eagle that had a nest on their property and was loud, violent and truly dangerous. I remember hearing Sparklehorse for the first time out of the speakers of my family’s Dodge Caravan near the river. I remember seeing Martin Devaney get an amazing haircut. I had sex in an igloo shaped floaty on that lake. And “in” is a charitable world. I had sex while also “involved” with an igloo shaped floaty. I lived a lot of life at that cabin, and it’s coming back to me in that beautiful nostalgia-while-in-a-car-and-the-radio-is-on-energy while heading back to our spot.
We get home and book ass to the pool since it isn’t raining. It is still cold outside. The pool water is a good temperature, but my head remains out of the water as I’m trying to make sure Sadie is safe and comfortable and my head is freezing cold. I have to pee frequently and every time I have to pee I have to pull Sadie out of the pool and bring her through a weird waiting area that unexplainably smells like cat dander (why would a public place smell like that?) into an explainably wet mens locker room.
The relatively large hot tub is stuffed with adults in different states of undress (there is one man who I believe never set foot in the tub and was wearing a lined plaid shirt like you’d wear at a pumpkin patch on a crispy mid-October afternoon). The hot tub heroes are tangentially connected to two teenagers looking after maybe 3-4 kids in the pool proper. Also in the mix is two brothers who seem to be in a relentless state of running the length of the pool area before slowing down briefly and then jumping in to the pool. Sadie is floating and smiling, I’m trying to imagine some connection with these other families but I can’t find it. I freeze around teenage girls because I just imagine it must be the biggest drag for them when I start talking. Slowly, some of the big hot tub family starts coming out of the tub and they start congregating around a patio table. These fuckers start smoking cigarettes. I love it and I hate it. It can’t be allowed right? But, it’s basically a rain out, nobody is there to enforce it. And I love the smell of a cigarette. Maybe I’m supposed to hate it on behalf of my daughter who is easily 40 feet away from the offending Marlboro, but I don’t. But I want them to not smoke in front of their kids. But honestly, you aren’t gonna hide it are you? Maybe it’s cigarette o’clock no matter where you are. Around the time they are out of the hot tub, the sun starts to shine, more folks start to show up. I see they are starting to open up the pool bar and I’m feeling good on many counts:
1) the sun will make swimming more enjoyable
2) more people might mean someone for Sadie to play with
3) the pool bar opening means maybe the cigarette fam will stop smoking
But my fascination/anger with the cigarette family goes further than just the cigarettes. They are mostly fat people, I’m a fat person. I’m mad at them for smoking and drinking sugar sodas and wearing lined plaid shirts at a pool because I think it’s a bad look for fat people. I think it makes fat people look like we don’t care about our health at all. But this is 100% unfair. Those people are living their life, they don’t have a duty to represent well for Team Fat. You want to smoke cigarettes and be fat and do it all poolside I should be cheering you on or at least not secret hating you. There’s one dude in particular who seems to have perfected the always smoking thing. I never don’t see a cigarette in his lips. He starts helping the pool bar staff open up the wood window blockings to get the whole snack area open. . .he’s doing this with a cigarette in his mouth. The smoking will continue. Every useless, hateful thing I think about this family, I know someone is thinking about me, and it’d be a better if I could love this family, and if people could love me. It’s hard to get there, but we need to get there.
After some turns in the hot tub and the swimming pool Sadie says she is ready to head back to the hotel room. I try to talk Sadie into a drive out to Bill Caperton’s cabin as I’ve figured he’s actually out here this weekend. Sadie poo-poos the drive and I realize that I need to make the whole day about Sadie (and to be selfish, also about this blog, at some point I realized I better write this one out and I got excited). I also showed Sadie some of Sponge-Bob Square Pants. I’ve never seen the show but she seemed to definitely enjoy it while I read the new J Dilla biography.
We ended up just eating at the now open restaurant at the resort and it was a god damn delight. First off, I ordered one tap Modelo with dinner and they accidentally made two, and I purposefully drank two. There was that two piece group playing who were just a treat. It was an older man playing a Tele Squier, no charts, great harmonies and big fingers that don’t look like guitar player fingers. The woman sang a lot of the lead, played pick bass (didn’t catch the brand) and seemed to constantly adjust to any chord changes that the man tossed in. Shit was classic.
The food was fine and I got recognized by a dude named Doug from Wayzata, loves the Current and wants to check out Jazz88 more. I’ve never gotten less Doug energy off of a Doug in my life. You give me a hundred guesses on Doug’s first name I would’ve guessed Dartagnan before I would’ve tried Doug. I guess sometimes you just name a baby Doug and you hope he grows into being a Doug. No such luck with this one.
After dinner we headed back for more swimming. Sadie loves swimming, I love swimming and it works for us. And boy, the evening crew at pool was top notch. There was three girls who I’m gonna guess were early high school. . .lots of braces, fashion conscious swimsuits, but still breaking out in uncontrollable laughter when certain sets of boys got remotely near them. My favorite duo/trio/quartet was built around a woman named Heidi. I had talked to her earlier and she just screamed out with a vibe of “do I have a story for you!!!”. She was an older, muscular, blond woman who told me it took her a really long to make it to the resort. She met a woman named Noelle who was just, an awesome eavesdrop. She works three jobs. Her man was upstairs playing pull tabs and drinking too much. She had a legit suntan cooked up, a pink swimsuit, some single color tattoos on the back of her neck and her arm and she had the vibe of “I play hard and I work hard and that’s the correct order of importance”. Heidi and Noelle went from “hey what’s your name” to “here’s a photo of my dad who passed six months ago that I’ve been showing everybody” in sub 15 minutes. Noelle’s man won a nice little chunk of change doing pull tabs upstairs so it was a round of drinks for the new trio. It was a Long Island, but if you ask our girl Heidi it was a subpar Long Island. “Have you been to Fletcher’s, now that’s a Long Island”. I got to know Noelle and Heidi up close and personal in the hot tub. Noelle adjusted Sadie’s swim suit cause her nipples were showing. I know maybe one is supposed to have a “don’t fucking touch my kid” thing vibe, but a) I’d been listening to Noelle for going on twenty minutes and I had long ago decided she was a good lady and b) I’d been pulling that fucking swim suit up all day and I didn’t mind the help. The greatest part is when Heidi’s mom steps over and Heidi calls her “Nance”. She doesn’t call her mom, calls her Nance. And she says with the loud authority of someone who has just found their resort soulmate “Nance, this is Noelle” and points her open hand down quickly and then slowly raises it up as if to say “what are the odds I’d meet a real one at this god damn pool?”
I let Sadie swim as long as she wanted. I think a five year old who is somewhat locked into a 2 year old’s sleep schedule is getting shortchanged hours wise. So I was glad to let Sadie stay out there and enjoy herself. It was so great to see her just start talking to people who had no idea who she was or what the fuck she was talking about. Have you seen a five year old in a multi-color life jacket scream “I just did a diving skill!!!” at three utterly disinterested teenage girls???. . .it’s magical.
We made it back to the hotel. I fed Sadie some pretzels and cheese puffs for her last food of the night. We watched the last five minutes of an episode of a Friends on TV before Sadie was thoroughly confused and said she actually did want “kid tv”. Five minutes of TPT later Sadie is going to bed and I’m out here blogging.
This was a special day, I talked to Sadie, I only saw Sadie, I engaged with Sadie, I laughed with Sadie, I bullshitted with Sadie. One honestly doesn’t get that many days that are 100% about just one of their children, but today, that’s what this was, and it was incredible.
Slowed Down Over the Weekend
So much of my energy is dedicated towards additive work. Taking on new projects, diving into older projects, completing tasks, scheduling more time with friends, filling up the schedule. As it became clear that this past weekend was going to be a bit slower I didn’t do anything to counteract that. I didn’t reach out to friends I hadn’t seen to add a visit, I didn’t scramble to find shows to go to. I missed seeing my wife, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time in the heat, and I didn’t feel ambitious. Next weekend is Twin Cities Jazz Fest. I’ll be working a ton, both on-site and at the station. I’m looking forward to that, but that gave me the inspiration to breath a little bit.
I had time to chip away at things, my turntables really need to be in better shape before I do a wedding in early July. I reset my PA so I could actually practice on the turntables. I went through a couple records, I balanced a tone arm. That’s like 22 minutes total, but it feels great and I’m more excited to work down there in the future. I’ll give it time, and I’ll work it out, but just putting in that little chunk was such a treat. I also watched the 2004 double murder thriller Sideways. Okay, it’s not actually a double murder thriller. But I do believe the movie is mainly focused on characters about my age doing things that are familiar to me. If you think I haven’t been around a lot of soul searching and confused affianced or freshly divorcified people you are wrong. I am 41. I am surrounded. This reflection on intimacy, and love, and right and wrong. It was a really enjoyable watch. I also just don’t watch movies enough, so taking something in across two nights with Rachel was really great.
And Father’s Day was excellent. We went to a brunch in the morning at Jax Cafe and it was spectacular. There was a time when buffets were my favorite shit on planet earth. That had everything to do with eating too much and feeling empowered to do so because of the environment. I still have some struggles with eating, but going literally HAM at a buffet is not one of them. I was able to really enjoy a great bounty of food, treat the food and myself with respect and walk away with a full stomach, but nothing remotely painful.
Today I feel unclear about how to approach Juneteenth. Juneteenth is a day that should be marked, it’s a day that should be studied, and I believe some celebrations are in order. In fact, at my job at Jazz88, I’ve been working hard to do our part to celebrate the new Sounds of Blackness tune “Juneteenth Celebration”. But for what I won’t assume are obvious reasons, this holiday can’t be hastily added to a list of days off and leave it at that. Summer holidays scream for gatherings, for barbecue, for friendship. We don’t get enough days off in this life, we should cherish them.
But our holidays are riddled with problems. I believe the problems they are riddled with are not largely the problems of history, they are the problems of present. I celebrate Juneteenth with the feeling that a handful of decades from now Americans will say “I can’t believe they celebrated Juneteenth in the same breath they disenfranchised voters. I can’t believe they celebrated Juneteenth while not passing the John Lewis voting acts. I can’t believe they celebrated Juneteenth while the Senate hasn’t voted in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021”. The era I will spend my adulthood in I believe is largely going to have the stain on it that the 1880s should. We are living through (and enabling) the reaction to Black agency. Not just of Obama, but of the promise of the 1960s and 1970s. In many measurable ways, things have gotten worse for Black America in the last 25 years. I’m thinking about home ownership, wage gap and more. There are many metrics that document Black America thriving in the same time period, but it isn’t the slam dunk it needs to be. It is not the corrective we need to see. The period after Radical Reconstruction was violent, it was intimidating and it set the tone for the early 1900s. And what I see in the post Obama period is an era that is so raw and regressive in regards to the race that is the wildest time imaginable for Juneteenth to become a Federal Holiday. Not every holiday is meant to mark progress, but in this case, the introduction of Juneteenth as a federal holiday (which was introduced by the Black Caucus I believe in the 1990s) marks progress backwards. We were unwilling to recognize Juneteenth as a federal holiday until something as terrible as George Floyd being lynched on camera came out. We have the day off because of how bad we have fucked up. I’m not saying Wells-Fargo needs to be open, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a barbecue, but I’m saying that if you celebrate with no reflection on the dynamics at play, I’m impressed, you’ve got silos higher than I care to build.
The Best Order for Instruments to Enter
Congratulations you’ve written a song. Here is the best order for the instruments from your song to enter. You might be curious if it matters what genre the song is, no, it doesn’t. This is the best order.
Piano
Organ
Acoustic Guitar
Voice
Bass
Hi-Hat
Bass Drum
Full Drum Kit
Back-Up Vocals
Sassy Single Note Electric Rhythm Guitar
Horn Section
Tambourine
Hand Claps
Top 6 Breakfast Experiences in the Twin Cities
Well damn. A big article just got posted today by Racket all about my former employer, MPR. To say it is a spicy meatball is an understatement, frankly, it’s a meatball of epic spice proportions. Previous spicy meatballs citations need to be reclassified as tangy meatballs occurrences or TBOs.. I’ve got all the thoughts, and all the feelings, and I’ll tell you what they are when I’m cold and dead! What I will tell you now is that I think that the author Jay Boller did an incredible job with the reporting and that I am really impressed with my former co-workers who spoke on the record about their experiences with MPR. Today, instead of speaking truth to power I’ll be speaking breakfast to blogs.
A couple notes before I get started:
1 - These breakfasts are currently available. If we were doing the historical best breakfasts in the Twin Cities I would just share a photo of the menu from Sunny Side Up on Lyndale. Do you think things will ever swing back to a restaurant like Sunny Side Up making a go of it in the Twin Cities. I think basically no. I love that place.
2 - I made a mistake early in life. I went to Al’s Breakfast in Dinkytown and ordered the grossest shit imaginable. It was a shrimp almondine omelette. When I tell people this they look at me like I am an idiot. Yes, I am an idiot. An idiot who loves shrimp. But it was so foul that I haven’t gone back ever. Everyone says “Al’s is the best in Minnesota” you know what they don’t say “try the shrimp almondine omelette”.
No. 6 - Pumpkin Pie Pancakes from Hope Breakfast Bar
Have you been to Hope Breakfast Bar? It’s amazing. They will make you feel like a monster for not having made a reservation. Even on a Tuesday at 9:37am when you imagine that not that many people could want breakfast. But they do a brisk business. They bring you coffee you can pour yourself. That’s key. And the pumpkin pie pancakes are spectacular. After the first bite you’ll think, “those don’t taste a ton like pumpkin pie”. After the third bite you’ll take a sip of coffee and you’ll realize you are getting the perfect amount of pumpkin joy. If you get the short stack you’ll even be able to do something resembling work later in the day!
No. 5 - Day by Day Cafe’s Earth Breakfast
Have you been to the backroom of Day by Day Cafe? With the books and wood booths? Did you cut school there with Bill Caperton while he was wearing overalls and a Dave Matthews band t-shirt in 1997? Stay with me. Did he order the Earth Breakfast and you thought he was the coolest human on earth? Absolutely. Do you always order it now unless the special sounds great. Amazing, what a coincidence. The Day by Day Cafe feels like the definition of what a breakfast spot should be. No distractions, it’s ran by recovering alcoholics and they don’t serve alcohol. They just do good breakfast in an amazing environment. Their back patio is such a gem. It’s this peaceful energy and if you can convince a couple friends to go there before the workday starts, you’ll be walking on cloud 9 all morning.
No. 4 - The Sausage and Cheese Swing Omelette at Mickey’s
You’ll note that most of my choices are located right in the fantastic city of St. Paul. St. Paul is a better breakfast city than Minneapolis. These are facts and the sooner you can confront them the better. What the hell is going on with the Mickey’s in downtown Saint Paul? I have no idea. But besides for two weeks when they served burgers out of a window in 2021 they’ve been closed since the top of the pandemic. But the Mickey’s by the airport is still killing it and that sausage and cheese (your choices include American and go f yourself) omelette is still classic. They drop the eggs in a milkshake blender which is both gross and spectacular. I am never getting a milkshake at Mickey’s but I am always getting that omelette. DO NOT GET ANYTHING ELSE. And don’t use your fork until you have to. Use the toast as your fork. Tell them Sean sent you, they definitely don’t know me.
No. 3 - The Uptown Diner in Minneapolis Tex-Mex
I would read a 4500 word oral history of the Tex-Mex breakfast. This is not a regional dish, this is a Minnesota thing in my estimation. And a lot of it derives from one family of restaurants that used to seem wildly aligned, like maybe even the same ownership. I’m talking about the Louisiana Cafe, The Grandview Grille, The Uptown Diner Minneapolis and a couple others. It seems like the influence of their menu expanded beyond their ownership and the Tex-Mex became a feature of many a breakfast spot in the Twin Cities. But the ultimate experience involves a spot that really feels like Grandview Grille (R.I.P.), Louisiana Cafe and the others used to feel: a little too bright, unexplainably uncomfortable padded booth seats, prompt water service and embarrassingly large servings. I am not a half-order kind of dude, but I have grown to become a half-order dude here, which by the way is still like 2/3s the size of a full one.
No. 2 - Petey’s Cajun Prime Rib Breakfast at Spring Street Tavern
I’m going to be 100% honest with you, I could take or leave the actual prime rib. That’s a lot in the morning. I don’t need all that. Plus, if I am at Spring Street Tavern I’m likely helping myself to a drink or three with my breakfast and steak doesn’t need to compete with all that. So I usually sweet talk them into getting the amazing cajun breakfast that is lying beneath that prime rib. CLARITY: The prime rib is good, I’ve had it. But what I’m after is the particular way they rock their cajun spices, their hollandaise and their potato set up. Bar none, best Cajun breakfast in the state. I would read a 2400 hundred word essay about the Cajun breakfast.
No. 1 - Maria’s Cachapas Venezolanas
This is it. This is the dish that you have to try when you’re getting breakfast in the Twin Cities. Corn pancakes with cheese and syrup. It doesn’t look great on paper, but thankfully we don’t eat paper. We eat these. I have so many fond memories of bringing friends to this place from out of town and tell them they must order the Cachapas Venezolanas. And they of course order something more savory cause people never listen to me. And then I give them a bite of my pancakes and they give me that face like they wish I was a person who was into splitting food with them. But I’m not. Sorry. So they miss out on great pancakes. Maybe this blog will stop that.
An Enjoyable Game to Play with the Rolling Stone Top 200 Rap Albums List
Rolling Stone, the paragon of fair and balance coverage of hip-hop music and culture on opposite day, has come out with what I am comfortable calling a very good list of the Top 200 Rap Albums of all time. Do they miss some things? Yes! Do they cover some stuff I need to learn about? Yes. Do they pick the wrong album by some of the greats? Yes. Did I play a weird game with some friends where we had to take ten records off the list that we were legitimately familiar with (you can’t just blindly pull some young artist off because you’re 41 years old and kind of an asshole). And then you get to put ten back on. Here’s what I got:
ADD:
Busta Rhymes: The Coming
2 Live Crew: As Nasty As They Wanna Be
Redman: Muddy Waters
Jay-Z: American Gangster
Aceyalone: Book of Human Language
Prince Paul: A Prince Among Thieves
Judgment Night: Soundtrack
Prodigy: HNIC
Outkast: ATLiens
Lupe Fiasco: Food & Liquor
REMOVE:
Chance the Rapper: Coloring Book
Handsome Boy Modeling School: So, How’s Your Girl
A Tribe Called Quest: People’s Instinctive Travels and the Path of Rhythm
Kanye West: Yeezus
Freddie Gibb and Madlib: Bandana
Childish Gambino: Because the Internet
Clipse: Hell Hath No Fury
The Roots: How I Got Over
Rick Ross: Teflon Don
Dr. Octagon: Dr. Octagynecologist
Out of Control
It was easy to feel out of control all weekend. I’ve struggled with what I’m eating, I’ve struggled to get the exercise I want. I didn’t realize what a blessing/curse/blessing again working on Saturday nights was. So first off, it sucked. I got to do an awesome thing on Saturday nights, but that means, no easy weekends for cabins, no easy weekends for just catching up. But I had this thing on Monday. . .I had a lunch meeting with the Trivia Mafia powers that be. Once a month I met with my nutritionist. Every week I met with my trainer. I had some time to open my mail, to touch base on Heiruspecs things. I’ve got none of that, I’m just out here. I get those hours in the weekday mornings. But if you’re trying to get to work in Minneapolis by 11am, you’re leaving like 10:40, and you have to make dinner, and you have to walk the dog, and you want to clean the house. What I’m trying to tell you is I haven’t really checked my mail since I started my new job. I haven’t done a project. I haven’t cleaned something all the way. And there is limited vacation at the new job, so I’m not going to be taking a day off to clean. If I take a day off I’m either going to go make money with Trivia Mafia or as a bass player or I’m going to go somewhere with my family.
So I just don’t know when I’m going to make some of the leaps I want in home management, in turntable joy, in a clean garage. And I think the reality is bit by bit, and it’s hard to acknowledge that. I have a dayjob that challenges me, nourishes me, and requires a lot of focus. That is all very good news. But, I have other pursuits that have checked those boxes for a long time and I can’t just let them go. I need to clear out the bullshit hours of my day. And those don’t come cascading in to my life in nice 15 minute chunks. Its the mindless re-checking of twitter (which I had weaned myself off of but I’m back), it’s the looking at the NYTimes Opinion. That could be a paragraph in a book. Instead it’s just this “hey give me the update” “hey did Andrew Broder like a new album?” “what is the funniest thing on twitter today”. It’s just a drain, a drain that is enjoyable per drip, but numbing per cup. I hate it. I’m happier when I stop, but in the micro what will one look do? What’s the problem with checking twitter sometimes? It’s A GOD DAMN SLIPPERY SLOPE IS WHAT IT IS.
So I want this peace. I don’t feel good about my body. My nutritionist has me not weighing myself, and since I’ve done that this is the first time where I feel like I’ve gained weight. And the truth is, if I feel that way, I want to address that. But if I got on the scale and didn’t lose weight would I just say. . .fuck it let’s party! Amber, my nutritionist, thinks even the “good” news I get out of weighing myself is part of a negative experience. I can feel that, I can believe that. But man, that’s an awful lot to navigate. Just a lot.
ARRRGH, what a great blog post. Glad to just spit something out, I can’t wait for the moment I’m fully rested and can give this two hours of my time. It’s not happening! WOWZ WOWZ WOWZZZZAAAA what a memory.
Since It Won’t Change
Everyday you day anything. Everyday that you bring your kids to school, that you shop for groceries. What you are doing is placing yourself and your children and your spouse and your elderly father in danger. You put them in danger of being there when someone opens fire. Today at the daycare I saw a dad look back and think about holding the door for me and my family as we were making our way into daycare. We were a solid eight steps away, he let the door close. That’s what the daycare wants us to do for every family, for every individual. If they don’t have the code, they don’t get in. Manners takes over when you see someone carrying a kid in -15 degree weather and you just want to let them in so the parent doesn’t have to take their hand out of their glove to punch in the code.
But it’s hopeless. Our hope for safety is wrapped up in Congress and that’s hopeless. And I tell you, I don’t think it’s exclusively because of the seven figure amounts that the NRA is funneling to a lot of our country’s Congresspeople. That’s not good, that doesn’t help. But I think that even though 90% of the country wants universal background checks, that 90% as a collective doesn’t have the appetite to go to war with the gun enthusiasts. There’s someone at NRA headquarters right now, throwing grounds in the coffeemaker, hoping there isn’t a shooting at their kids school today; hoping the grocery store their grandmother goes to doesn’t get shot up. They are part of the 90% that wants gun control. But I can tell you it’s not changing, they will sweat this out, they will take the shout downs from their constituents. They’ll take Beto O’Rourke’s moral high ground. In the end, there’s carnage we accept. And that carnage includes children. That carnage includes grandmother’s grabbing the groceries in Buffalo. And one day the carnage we accept will include your child, or my child, or your neighbor.
We can stop selling guns, but we won’t. We can start doing background checks, but we won’t.
I was born in 1981. I was raised in Williamstown, a college town in Massachusetts. Putting together what I saw and what my parents told me I thought we were on the part of the arc of the moral universe where things were getting better. I thought racism was dying a fast-enough-for-my-white-family death. I didn’t realize that Reagan and the movement that elected him was doubling down on racism. I didn’t realize that some of the most promising leaders of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement had died violent deaths at the hands of our government. That some had been terrorized by our government, that some were in self-imposed exile. I thought this way for too long. I thought this way cause I’m an optimist, I thought this way cause I saw improvements in the corner of the world I live in. But there is a violence, an evil in this country that I don’t understand, that we won’t look directly at. Gun violence is just part of it. Our rates of violence, our justifications of wars, our tenure as the police force of planet earth, it will all be studied, and it won’t be favorable.
I’d like to change subjects cause I have nothing more to say at this moment about gun violence.
I don’t think we’ll be dealing with gun violence in fifty years. I remember talking to my dad about the grindingly terrible relations between Israel and Palestine. My dad said that he thought the conflict wouldn’t last 50 years. He couldn’t say what direction it was going, but it wasn’t going to stay put. And I feel the same about where we are in America. Are we going to be cataloging mass shootings by the hundreds a year in five decades. I’m apt to think no. We’ll be dead, or we’ll have moved to another country and only the armed, or they’ll be less guns, or more reasonable gun control. And I know the numbers of dead in mass shootings are paltry compared to suicides, compare to domestic violence. I also think that when people have some reasonable expectation that someone might open fire in their kid’s school, at their aunt’s grocery store, they’ll relate to the world different. These days when we are faced with reality I think about the Americans who have fought against all odds to make this country better. They have kept on going and pushed for change. There will be hundreds of such people today, at George Floyd Square, pushing Minneapolis and this entire country to live up to its ideals. But I don’t think we want to live up to our ideals. We want to conveniently cling to the ideals that better us personally. No one ever wanted to live up to the ideals.
We’ve been a democracy since the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Since then there’s been near constant agitation towards black voter disenfranchisement. Progress in the directions I’d like to see has been uniquely elusive in this time. I don’t think America is exceptional. I think Americans are exceptional. I think the reprehensible chattel slavery that thrived here and in a handful of other countries created amazing people, amazing music, amazing families. I’m not moving. I want to change America. But it’s not to make America live up to its ideals. Its to give America ideals and then start living up to them. There’s isn’t a back that is worth going to. Onward, and away from violence, and towards truth and reconciliation, towards reparations, towards an end to patriarchy, towards an end to disenfranchisement, towards a world where we treat our melting pot with the care, love and self-preservation that we see from some of the more homogeneous Scandinavian nations. Onward and afraid.
A Bad Five
This week in couple’s therapy I stumbled into a memory from kindergarten. My dad slept in, took a long shower and missed my first ever play. I don’t know if this is world ending stuff, but the therapist and Rachel gave me a look like “oh shit, that’s a lot”. Even at the time in kindergarten I knew how bad it hurt. I remember looking out into the surprisingly large classroom we were in and really knowing that he was not there. It was in the middle of the day, a lot of moms and dads weren’t there. But I’m guessing that a lot of those that weren’t there weren’t in a long shower instead. They were working jobs with a level of inflexibility that a professor of economics at an elite liberal arts college didn’t have to deal with. My dad was apologetic, but he also promptly informed me it wasn’t a big deal; there’d be other plays, and he’d be there, he’d just missed this one. It was probably 1986. He’s 38 or so at the time. A couple years younger than I am now. I guess I can say it was a big deal, whether it should be, or whether it makes sense for it to be. That memory is 36 years old. And it’s not just like it was yesterday, I don’t have a strangely photographic memory. I don’t remember the play, I don’t remember where my mom was. I just remember standing on some kind of stage for the first time in my life and looking for my dad and not seeing him.
The couple’s therapist, The couples therapist, I’m really stressed out about the apostrophe here. It’s not like it’s two couples.
The therapist, she has already been trying to get me to go into my own therapy for complex trauma. I have a hard time calling anything in my life complex or traumatic. So many boxes checked in my life; so much support, so many smiles, so much success. It’s hard. There’s trauma I’ve understood from others and haven’t faced myself, and my shit doesn’t hold a candle to it. But I’ve got things, things I don’t understand. Things that I thought were settled after doing a year of EMDR therapy. (Don’t worry, I didn’t know what it was either. Here’s a link.) But according to our couple’s therapist, that’s surgical. That’s working away the impact of one event. The event we focused on was also from that joyous rollercoaster of a year, 1986. I was allowed to go to church with my best friend Betsy on Sundays. My family wasn’t religious. I loved it, I loved going with Betsy. And yes, I fucking loved the snacks afterwards. And yes, I loved putting like six of those cube ass sugar-cubes in my tea. And I loved eating the Oreos and Nilla wafers they had laid out there. I came home one Sunday morning peppered in Oreo crumbles and my mom could see them from a mile away. She grabbed me angrily and brought me up to her bedroom. She stood me on the scale and told me if I was over 100 lbs I was never going to church again. I was 101. I still remember that green glowy digital scale reading it out. Spent a lot of time a couple years ago trying to make sense of that. Trying to talk to that young boy and tell him what grown Sean thinks of someone who would say that to a little boy. What grown Sean could tell him about what that Mom was probably going through at that time. Trying to give young Sean the love he wasn’t getting, trying to give that young Mom the forgiveness I had refused to give her even when she died.
I’m scared having a child who just turned five. Five is when I started gaining a “worrisome” amount of weight. Five is when my mom put me on the scale and said “no more Church”. Five is when Dad missed the play. I had a great childhood, good times, good laughs, good foundation. But I now understand that I had a bad five. And I had a bad six. And I had bad years dropped in throughout my childhood. I could take a long shower on Thursday May 12, 2022, miss a play at Sadie’s daycare and she could be blogging about it in 2053. We leave all sorts of shit in our childrens’ memories, nuggets of wisdom that will pay dividends for decades, and memories of bullshit that will also be on the emotional ledger sheet for annums. And somehow, realizing that my daughter is five, it’s all on the record now. I know it was on the record before, but I don’t remember much of my life before kindergarten. But now, the way I treat Sadie, that is part of her fabric. And I’m so scared I’ll mess it up. I’m so scared of what I’ll plant and I’m so scared of what I won’t plant.
I’ve got no answer, but it paralyzes me to think about it. In the moment, you do it, you talk with your children, you navigate their tantrums, you celebrate their joys. But when I pull back I’m so nervous that I’ve already planted something horrible, and of course I have. We all will, we all have. And that is paralyzing and there’s no stopping it.
My Heart is Full, My Brain is Complicated
If you wait too long to write one of these posts it can just feel like there is too much to say. 2022 has a been a year of incredible change. My wife Rachel and I have faced a lot of medium difficulties and minor inconveniences throughout the year. I’ve navigated a big job and schedule change. I’m preparing to end my time as a weekly host of 331 Club trivia, a role I’ve held down for 15 years. My previous employer is also undergoing a tremendous amount of change. It impacts me as a listener to the Current but also as someone who is close with so many people on the staff. The world is a jumblin’ right now. But I’m in a pretty awesome place.
The work I’m doing at Jazz88 is incredibly satisfying. I’ve never worked as a Music Director with a capital M before. I did a lot of Music Directoresque work for Purple Current but the buck didn’t quite stop with me and I didn’t hold that title. Having the opportunity to review new music and dive into a truly impressive library of jazz music and figure out new ways to present it, organize it, celebrate it, expand it. . .it’s otherworldly. Sometimes I walk over to Andrew from Membership and point out that I can’t believe this is part of my job. Hilariously as I’m typing this Jazz88 is playing a the song Sidewinder for the second time this morning. Different artists, but I believe an ace Music Director probably wouldn’t be having that song air twice within the same four hours.
Here’s your inspirational Yearbook Quote:
“YOU LIVE AND YOU LEARN and you don’t play the smokin’ hot Lee Morgan standard more than once in a six hour period.” -Sean McPherson
The second half of my day is spent DJing and I love it. I talk to my mens Bob Jurek, Justus Sanchez or Mike Larson to get the skinny on traffic. We celebrate musical birthdays, we cover the news. I turn up the world’s greatest jazz quite loud and soak in the sound. I interact with listeners on email & twitter, but not with the intensity of a Radio Free Current. I get a couple phone calls, couple emails, couple tweets. I try to stay all business on twitter which I struggle with. I’m re-firing this here blog a bit cause I realized I was losing control over the social media again. Also I interviewed John Pizzarelli and he did a version of the Pat Metheny tune “Last Train Home” that I am obsessed with. Check it here.
LONG SOCIAL MEDIA ASIDE:
The company I co-own, Trivia Mafia, just spent $761 this morning on FB/IG ads. It feels terrible. I think some relatively large amount of that money goes back to Mark Zuckerberg, and I think he’s a garbage man who will be remembered very unfavorably in a world he will have completely changed. In the Atlantic the writer George Packer said that we are going to look at the way we permitted children to jump on social media at age 12 as one of the grandest mistakes we’ll ever have made as a society. I just wholeheartedly agree. I see this opportunity to treat the social media relationship that millennials and generation Z were permitted to establish as children as an aberration. My whole life is against the overuse of social media. I believe in live events, I believe in linear entertainment, I believe in print magazines. I’m no luddite, I believe in Google Maps, I believe in being able to listen to Soundgarden or Mobb Deep whenever I want in my car if I don’t like what the radio is playing. But I want social media to be a means to an end; an invite to something in the material world. When I open up the company wallet to be on social media I feel I am feeding a beast who deserves none of our hard earned money. It’s a transfer of money from an in person and linear event company to a company that en masse inspires people to stay home and hate themselves, no matter how many ads they put up about their hard of hearing basketball group on TV. ASIDE DONE.
We are settling into a better routine at home, the Timberwolves are still in the playoffs and someone else from Heiruspecs is in charge of completing the artwork for the album with our designer. So I’ll count that all as a win.
I turn 41 on Thursday and I feel blessed to be involved in so many great projects, to be a part of a great family and see horizons of more hours of reflection, of reading, of relaxation, of taking in concerts, of playing music, of existing.
A Couple Weeks off the Radio Reflections
I finished up my job at the Current on Saturday March 04 and it was just today (March 22) that I officially started off my work for Jazz88KBEM. I’d love to tell you that it was a joyous two weeks with no stress whatsoever, but we all know that our careers are often just the tip of the iceberg for stress in our life, especially when there’s a war going on. But I’ve got a completely random bag of musings, recommendations et cetera to share with you.
You Don’t Need My General Take About Ukraine, but I have a couple thoughts about why this reprehensible, unjustified assault on a sovereign nation is eliciting a unique response
Sovereign countries aren’t invaded everyday in our world. State violence, ethnic cleansing, many horrible things happen everyday, but a sovereign country being invaded is not all that common. Sometimes it’s America doing the invading, sometimes it’s us flying drones to kill people in countries we aren’t trying to occupy but need to do some killing in. Maybe we shut our mouth when it’s our country doing the killing. Am I equating the wholesale murder of civilians with poorly managed drone attacks that result in the death of civilians? No. I’m not equating, but I am comparing.
Here’s a thought exercise: how would we be acting if Indonesia was invading Australia? How would it be different? How would it not be? Part of why Western media has their eyes locked on this conflict is because of the obvious potential for this to balloon into a larger conflict that would REQUIRE the involvement of Western troops. But, another part of why Western media has their eyes on this conflict is because the country being invaded is. . .Western! It’s full of white people, largely Christian. Some people say that Western media is paying attention because it’s “in our backyard”. But you know what, Australia isn’t in our backyard, but it’s full of white people, largely Christian.
Flipside, we aren’t particularly afraid of Indonesia building an empire right? We don’t fear expansion in the same way we do from Putin. We (Westerners) aren’t fixated on Indonesia, right? I don’t know the name of the Prime Minister. I don’t know the political bent of the country. And maybe I wouldn’t be afraid that Indonesia would win. We are afraid Russia will win. We seem to be slightly less afraid that Russia will win today than we were 24 hours ago, but it’s still Russia. They’re huge. The nuclear weapons is a huge thing too. An unprovoked war between two countries without nuclear weapons? It’s easy to see the containment built right in.
Is it wrong to do thought exercises when civilians are being killed? When war crimes are being committed? I believe it is still acceptable to do a thought exercise. I am heartbroken for the senseless and depraved misery that Russia has exacted upon Ukraine. But I need to explore why my fear, my anger, my addictive reading of articles is on a different level here than when the story about the hidden casualties in American drone wars comes out (NYTimes December 2021). So I am exploring it.
There Are Unique Challenges to Being a Dad Today
I see something in myself and a lot of the dads I’m around right now, and I’ve been talking about it with my wife and with some of these dads. I’m gonna tell you my story, but I am starting to realize that this might be more generational than unique to me.
I bust my ass on parenting shit a lot more than my dad did. My dad wasn’t above it all, I saw my dad do plenty of dishes, I saw my dad bring me and my brother out every weekend while my mom worked a weekend job while I was in pre-school. But my mom ran the show, my dad traveled and my dad, by his own admission, only blossomed as a dad after his kids crossed that ability to really reason and communicate, which he said hit at about third grade for me and my brother Steve. But my competition for the Dad Olympics is my dad and maybe a bit my wife’s dad. All I feel with the dads of my generation is pure camaraderie; I have never once felt shown up by another dad at the playground. It’s not because I was doing a better job than them, it’s because I figured we were in a brotherhood, locked into competition not with each other but with our own father’s and our wives*. Why are we in competition with our wives? I’m in competition with my wife because I feel like if I’m kicking more ass at parenting than my dad is, I must obviously be making my wife’s life better immeasurably than my dad made his wife’s. So I should be fucking worshipped! But, reality interrupts this planned orgy of worship. Why?
Well, it was a real miscarriage of justice for our parents’ generation that mothers were expected to do the most demanding parts of parenting, handle the longest hours of parenting and deliver the goods in their career. The fact that many women did all that doesn’t make it okay that they had to. And when I lighten the load for my wife compared to what my dad did for my mama, it’s still not even, it’s still not fair. She’s still getting the short end of the stick.
But as I choke up on that stick and take more responsibility than my dad did, I am trading compensated, celebrated, CAREER WORK for domestic, emotional, thankless and largely invisible work. I am moving into work that we have relegated to be second class, to be beneath the station of the working man. And the narrative that I hear in my head is that I’m making a deal that pleases no one. The ghost of the Baby Boomer father is wondering: “why do you do so many diapers? why do you feel you can’t travel during the week? why can’t you catch a happy hour sometimes before you come home? can’t she do that?” And the very non-ghost of your real live wife is saying “you want a trophy for picking the kids up? a ticker tape parade for knowing how to take a temperature in the armpit, fuck off and grab a broom you bag of shit”.
So no one’s happy. And what Rachel opened my mind to is that there is another sphere of competition that looms larger in a young mom’s life than in a young dad’s: the competition with other moms. Rachel makes it clear she isn’t in a pure sisterhood with the mom’s at the park. There’s judgement about the quality of outfits, the healthiness of the snacks, the way you wear the yoga pants. There’s probably competition about how little your partner has to do. I think most of these wars are waged at public parks and on Instagram and I only go to public parks partially for that reason. AND GUESS WHAT ELSE: It’s obvious to anyone in the working world today, women aren’t in the minor leagues. They get paid minor league dollars which is absolutely bogus, but the expectations are high, the pressure is high, the self-generated competition is high. So there’s no relief.
Okay, I started this section by saying that dad’s have it uniquely hard and then of course circled around to realize that women have it worse. I knew that when I started typing. . .but I think dads have it hard because of this dissonance where they can look at an internal measuring stick and feel like they’re measuring up, but get really different input from both their partners and the pressures and expectations they likely received from their parents.
Reading Fiction is Excellent
I’m reading Karl Ove’s “My Struggle: Book 2” and it’s just spectacular. I just happened upon a five page description of a Communist uncle who fell under the sway of Heidegger and other thinkers but had no one to share this energy with, so he would unload a year of reading onto his young nephews on Christmas Eve every year. It was one of the most gorgeous things I’ve ever read in my entire life. I read it hours ago with a soundtrack of my 2 year old losing her shit 8 feet away and I was still transported to a dark Christmas Eve in Norway in 1986 and you can’t get that from a lot else besides a novel.
Reading About Sex is Excellent
Rachel found a book called “Come As You Are” by Emily Nagoski. This is a book that is challenging me to really think about some nuts and bolts of sex, some emotional components of sex and realizing that you’re doing it really wrong if you’re only looking at either half of that equation. I think letting sexual relationships age, mature and evolve is one of the hardest things to pull off. I don’t know, there’s some ideal image of sexual intimacy for me and it has very little to do with my current lived reality. But one doesn’t need to bang their head against the wall about that or resign yourself to a shit sex life. You need to do what you do about everything else in your life, READ A GOD DAMN BOOK ABOUT IT AND KEEP TRYING.
It Felt Good To Say Goodbye to Spotify Just for Me
I’m not taking Heiruspecs’ music off of Spotify. I’m sticking with Spotify on that end. But I want to feel really good right before I press play on music. I feel great telling me phone to play KBEM, or the Current, or KEXP or WBGO or WWOZ. I feel great dialing up an album I paid for on Bandcamp. But I stopped feeling good about hitting Spotify. I didn’t want to press play. So I wanted to stop paying. I switched up to Tidal. Tidal is not making bands rich, but I’m paying the highest price I can for the highest quality I can pay (that’s $30 a month for a big ass hifi family plan). I can really hear the difference on rock albums especially. I can hear it on jazz records too. In fact, I can hear it on a lot. And the curated playlists on Tidal are a lot smarter, a lot less predictable, a lot more inspired. And I do like the idea that they’re gonna give one artist I bump hard a full on $10 of my subscription. That sounds small, but man, what if it’s Pharaoh Sanders and not Beyonce? Pharaoh doesn’t need $10, but if it all starts to move towards the artists of the world getting a taste, getting a bigger taste, that’s a good look. And some billionaire is gonna get some money off of me streaming music. I’d rather have it be an unbelievably talented black rapper who hasn’t given Joe Rogan $1 million, let alone $200 million to talk his shit. That’s Danny Ek’s choice, but I don’t have to keep on sending him $14.99 a month to bankroll it.
I was on a podcast called Bedroom Beethovens
I appeared on a podcast called Bedroom Beethoven’s with a dude named Marcello. I got so overwhelmed with the “Sean is leaving the Current” fanfare and pulling every tweet into my ego like a twine ball that I haven’t pressed play on the final product yet, but Marcello had done an impressive amount of research and he had a great tone and angle. It’s here.
The Podcast “Plain English” with Derek Thompson is Amazing
I don’t think anyone is talking about this podcast but I have no idea why. Derek Thompson is a writer from the Atlantic who is insightful without using the “I’m so insightful voice” that Ezra Klein and Michael Barbaro do. It’s not pretentious, it’s well researched and it’s efficient. It takes the attention and intelligence of its audience seriously which is as rare as a unicorn in podcasts.
Sometimes Very Simple Things Make You Happy
I have a visceral, emotional connection with the coffeeshop J&S on Randolph right by my house. They technically want you to call it JS because I guess J got a divorce from S so now it’s Just Steve’s. But everyone calls it J&S. Michelle and Dakota are the baristas on Sunday mornings. I go in there every Sunday with Martin Devaney and we make a little small talk with them and then sit and sort it out. And it is my oasis, my moment to talk about my life with my best friend. But it’s so special that even a coffee from there during the week can turn my day around. It’s like walking into that building gives me the invitation to relax, reflect and appreciate life. I was having a horrible day maybe about a week ago. I was in a funk and it was shit news every hour on the hour. But man when I took that first sip of coffee that day got a solid 21% less bad.
Here’s the other thing: I ended up having to buy a new car because the water pump started leaking. But the reason I already knew what I wanted (Volvo S90) is because I wanted a smooth ass sedan that would make it easier for me to stream radio stations from other markets in my car. Mainly, I’ve been focused in on KBEM, doing my research and loving the jams. But I am an outspoken fan of Larry Mizell Jr., the afternoon DJ on KEXP. And that first day I got my Apple Pay dialed up and pressed play on that and there was some funky music coming out of KEXP. It was simple, it felt good. Bring it on. And listen to Larry sometime.
The Spelling Bee is Coming Back
COVID was bad to trivia, but it was lights out for the Drinkin’ Spelling Bee. That’s a situation where you are sharing a microphone, having lots of loose boozy energy and generally just navigating a lot. But we are feeling good about doing a “you gotta be vaccinated to compete” spelling bee this Saturday at Amsterdam Bar and Hall. I’m gonna be there hanging out, cheering on my team and rocking out. It would be awesome to have you there. And it’d be great for you to buy a ticket. What a treat. It starts early, and starting early on a Saturday is a genius move.
Buy a ticket to this event and drink Summit with me on Saturday.
I’m Diving Right in with KBEM
I’m going to be on the air soon soon soon with KBEM. I am so elated to spend my afternoons with you spinning jazz. I’m finishing up orientation on Wednesday and I’ll probably be helping out a bit on Thursday and then taking over as soon as Friday with 3-7pm Central for the Afternoon Jazz Cruise. You can listen here, and I sincerely hope you do. I love the station and I can’t wait to bring my flavor to it. This is a very exciting moment for me and I hope it’s going to be something you enjoy.
*My whole center of the argument here is a very heteronormative space. This doesn’t fit the reality I live in, but especially at the kids playground I need to confess to you that if I see a dad hanging alone on a Saturday I am pre-thinking that he has a wife at home. I’m not considering it possible that he’s a single dad or that he is a couple with another man. That’s not fair, that’s not right, but I’m trying to give you where my brain is at about it, and that’s where I’m at.