I’m in a group chat of ex-rockers (like me) and music biz types and here’s some of the music musings I’ve shared there recently…

🥁 This was one magical day for Neil Young…

GlennA @GlennAirey

Neil Young wrote Cinnamon Girl, Down by the River and Cowgirl in the Sand one after the other on the same afternoon while he was in bed with the flu. Some days I think I’ve done well if I get round to having a shave.

March 10th 2022

86 Retweets713 Likes

🥁 Depeche Mode: “Slide into the DM” used to mean something different.

🥁 Queen guitarist Brian May on how they got that huge sound on the “We Will Rock You” percussion track.

So how did you record the stomp, stomp, clap so it would sound grand and reverberating as opposed to three people, four people stomping their feet and clapping?

MAY: Well, I'm a physicist, you see. So I had this idea if we did it enough times - and we didn't use any reverb or anything - that I could build a sound which would work. We were very lucky. We were working in an old disused church in North London, and it already had a nice sound - not an echoey sound, but a nice big, crisp sound to it. And there were some old boards lying around. I don't know what they were, but they just seemed ideal to stamp on. So we kind of piled them up and started stamping, and they sounded great anyway. But being a physicist, I thought, well, supposing there were a thousand people doing this, what would be happening? And I thought, well, you would be hearing them stamping. You would also be hearing a little bit of an effect which is due to the distance that they are from you. So I put lots of individual repeats on them - not an echo, but a single repeat and at varying distances. And the distances were all prime numbers. Now, much later on, people designed a machine to do this. And I think it was called Prime Time or something.

But that's what we did. As we recorded each track, we put a delay of a certain length on it. And none of the delays were sort of harmonically related. So what you get is there's no echo on it whatsoever, but the claps sound as though they spread around the stereo, but they're also kind of spread as regards distance from you. So you just feel like you're in the middle of a large number of people stamping on boards and clapping and also singing.

🥁 Lou Reed was one honest fella:

🥁 Whoa. Not only did Karen Carpenter have the voice of an angel, she could cook on drums too.

Michael Warburton @MichaelWarbur17

In case you didn’t know KAREN CARPENTER wasn’t just a Drummer, she was a really freakin’ great one. None other than Buddy Rich seriously rated her.

August 24th 2022

13,110 Retweets90,406 Likes

🥁 Jeff Buckley making fun of Led Zeppelin:

Kashmir (Led Zeppelin Parody) - Live at Olympia, Paris, France - July 1995 Jeff Buckley

🥁 One of my fave Zep performances is them at a Danish TV studio in ‘69. The kids seem legit shellshocked lol.

🥁 Fun Tom Petty/Bob Dylan story:

During one show, Dylan grew increasingly worked up about the brightness of the stage lights. He thought they were too bright and threatened to leave if they weren’t turned down. Evidently, nobody lowered the brightness level because Dylan stormed off the stage in the middle of the show. The Heartbreakers kept playing, and Petty followed Dylan backstage.

“Bob was going, ‘F***ing lights. I’m not going back out there. It’s like f***ing Disneyland out there,'” George Harrison’s son Dhani told Rolling Stone. “And Tom says to Bob, ‘You’ve never been to Disneyland.'”

The moment broke through Dylan’s anger and frustration.

“Bob just started laughing,” Dhani said. “Tom called him on it, straight out. They walked back out there and carried on playing.”

Dhani believed that this brief backstage moment “says everything about the way Tom interacted with people: honest but cheeky.”

🥁 ”Bob Dylan Announces New Book ‘The Philosophy of Modern Song.’” Playlist of the songs he picked:

Detroit City Bobby Bare Bob Dylan - The Philosophy of Modern Song by TJ McDonald

🥁 Didn’t know Gene Clark from The Byrds had great solo stuff too. His “No Other” album is super.

Life's Greatest Fool Gene Clark No Other

🥁 Read that John Lennon’s recording of “Sun King” on the Abbey Road album was heavily influenced by Fleetwood Mac’s song “Albatross.” Here’s live version of the track. Cool vibe.

🥁 Love when Fred Armisen does music related comedy bits like showing off his drumming skills or running through the history of punk:

🥁 80’s Iggy is a whole vibe.

🥁 What about jazz? OK, here's my “guy who doesn't know jazz that well but has good taste” jazz playlist:

High Seas - Remastered 2006 / Rudy Van Gelder Edition Art Taylor 🎷 Jazz by Matt Ruby

🥁 ”Rock as Real Estate” talks about how everything is a couple of people going electro nowadays, including folk.

The new streamlined "folk" acts and the one-or-two-person computer programmed "electro" aggregates are wed not only by a reduction in number of performers in each (resulting in a larger number of total "groups") but principally—and most importantly—by the abandonment of the acoustic drum set.

🥁 Always enjoy Rick Rubin philosophizing.

🅼🅰🆃🆃 💎 🆁🆄🅱🆈 @mattruby

Enjoyed this convo between @lexfri and @RickRubin. Good exchange of scientific/analytical vs artistic/spiritual mindset. #275 – Rick Rubin: Legendary Music Producer — Lex Fridman Podcast — Overcastbuff.ly

September 15th 2022

🥁 Want playlists made by humans instead of robots? Perhaps Shfl is the answer for ya.

Shfl is a music recommendation tool — one that depends only on the very simplest algorithm of them all, random sampling. It is built from a massive number of specific recommendations from individual people — music critics, musicians, and a few carefully chosen lists from around the web.

🥁 Never really got the song “Drive” by The Cars until I heard this Aimee Mann cover of it:

Drive - From "The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story" Aimee Mann

[Verse 3]
Who's gonna hold you down
When you shake?
Who's gonna come around
When you break?

[Chorus]
You can't go on
Thinking nothing's wrong, but now
Who's gonna drive you home tonight?

This commenter at Genius site says it better than I woulda:

This song is about confronting someone who is in denial of some crucial problem of their life, either substance abuse of mental health matters. The imagery points out several problems the subject is experiencing : staying up too late, a fixation on dreams (nightmares perhaps?), incapable of driving themself (too drunk or manic), trembling (out of mental distress or possible seizures from withdrawal effects), screaming, and denial “You can’t' go on thinking nothing’s wrong.” The insinuation is that this person is on a slippery slope and if things continue the subject of the song will face complete mental breakdown and more alienation and isolation. The tone of the delivery of the vocal, to me, suggests this singer cares deeply for this person but has been hurt by them in the past. Despite that he is choosing tough love – intervening in hope that the subject can learn to see past the denial and be honest with themselves.

🥁 Texting a DJ pal about Madonna and ABBA:

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Probably raising the rates around here soon. Y’know, inflation and all. Get into a paid plan on the cheap while ya still can…

Quickies

🎯 "It's the Harvard of the South" always cracks me up. It's like calling your balls the Buckingham Palace of your crotch.

🎯 Corn is such a diva. “You have to peel my husk. And you can’t eat my cob. And all that is for a few kernels. And yes, you’ll need to floss for an hour immediately afterwards.” Whatever, drama queen.

🎯 People who think service, ambiance, and quality of food are all equally important are the problem. I'll eat in a dumpster while the maitre d' calls my mom a ho if the filet is tasty.

🅼🅰🆃🆃 💎 🆁🆄🅱🆈 @mattruby

@LaurenKGurley @JStein_WaPo This sounds like a headline from the 1870s: "Railroads have agreed to give workers the ability to take days off for medical care without being subject to discipline."

September 15th 2022

688 Retweets5,202 Likes

🎯 We need an emoji for [backs away slowly]

🎯 I like how "we need to have a conversation about..." now means "you need to change your mind about..."

🎯 Every "will call in 10mins" text is a trigger warning that potential human interaction lies ahead.

🎯 No one cares about Black Mirror anymore because it was kinda cool to imagine all this dystopian stuff happening in 50 years but then it all got real way too fast and now it just feels like watching a documentary.

🎯 It’s good that we’re giving psychedelics to veterans who have PTSD. But the people we really need to give ‘em to are the men who start the wars.

🎯 Every documentary on psychedelics animates trips exactly the same way yet somehow forgets to include the panther with 7 eyes that has a waterfall coming out of its mouth featured in 100% of hallucina– Wait, is that just me?

Comedy

🤪 Check out my most recent standup clips on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

🤪 Recently at Funny How: Letters to a Young Comedian…

• Jerry Seinfeld on writing “switch piece” jokes

• Therapist to the (funny) stars on why most comedians are either the youngest or only child

• Groans are laughs for p*ssies

• …and more.

🤪 Next Misguided Meditation with Matt Ruby in NYC on Oct. 18 at Caveat. $5 off with code “guru” here.

5-spotted

🗯 The Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure Books.

You didn't necessarily identify with the unnamed "you" who starred in each book. It was more that each protagonist offered you an alternative to yourself, or forty alternatives to yourself. The second person was less like a mirror and more like a costume. Reading these books wasn't about the pleasure of "relatability" but about something opposite – the pleasures of distortion, recklessness, and multiplicity.

🗯 Dr Warren Farrell on feminine vs. masculine behavior:

I have no problem with society opening up the option of more feminine behaviour for men and more masculine behaviour for women. But we’re not doing that- we’re making feminine behaviour the superior behaviour and masculine behaviour is ‘toxic masculinity’.

Note: Whenever I post about gender stuff, I fear sounding like a “men’s rights activist” and I can’t tell if that’s because I’m one of the few sane people left or part of the problem.

🗯 Ted Gioia explains why he’s publishing his next book on Substack.

The Internet may be a curse in many regards, but it has given me direct contact with my readers. I cherish that. Things that once took a year now happen instantaneously. Instead of getting feedback from one editor, I learn from thousands of people, many of them very smart with useful things to say. The whole process is energized, streamlined, and turbocharged.

+1 to all that.

🗯 Mats Wilander on Roger Federer.

“I always tell people,” Mats Wilander says, “that when you watch Federer, don’t just watch him play the point. Watch what he does in between points. He’s always fiddling with a tennis ball or with his racket, and he’s hitting an extra shot, trying some crazy drop shot when the point is over, or flicking the ball to a ball kid after a missed serve. Nobody else does that. Nobody has ever done that. And he still does it. Wimbledon final — it doesn’t matter. He just seems to enjoy the feeling of having the ball on his strings.”

🗯 Linguistics professor George Lakoff is a fave of mine. I always come back to his theory that your politics depends on whether you buy into a caring mommy or strict daddy framework more.

Well, the progressive worldview is modeled on a nurturant parent family. Briefly, it assumes that the world is basically good and can be made better and that one must work toward that. Children are born good; parents can make them better. Nurturing involves empathy, and the responsibility to take care of oneself and others for whom we are responsible. On a larger scale, specific policies follow, such as governmental protection in form of a social safety net and government regulation, universal education (to ensure competence, fairness), civil liberties and equal treatment (fairness and freedom), accountability (derived from trust), public service (from responsibility), open government (from open communication), and the promotion of an economy that benefits all and functions to promote these values, which are traditional progressive values in American politics.

The conservative worldview, the strict father model, assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline - physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people. Once grown, the self-reliant, disciplined children are on their own. Those children who remain dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or recalcitrant) should be forced to undergo further discipline or be cut free with no support to face the discipline of the outside world.

I say we need both! Yin and yang! Male and female! Nancy and Lee! Enough with binary thinking, gimme that duality jambalaya.

Until next time…

-Matt