Music

It’s the smile that always sticks with me.

There was no shortage of smiles in the flamboyant and hedonistic hair band scene that sprung up in the wake of Van Halen’s titanic success. And most of them were the devilish smiles of libertine young men who were delighted to be getting away with something: namely, overindulging in the intoxicants and promiscuity that were frowned upon by the priggish adults of the Reagan era.

To whatever… See more →

Eddie Van Halen is dead. Long live Eddie Van Halen. I don’t know what to say. I’m crushed. twitter.com/RollingStone/s…

So sad to hear Vern Rumsey is gone too soon. I was a latecomer to Unwound, but finding them was a revelation. RIP 💔 youtube.com/watch?v=EBq55Y…

How did you know, cuz I never told. #quarantunes

As you may know, this song hails from Minnesota, which is no coincidence, because today is MN native @meganborn’s birthday! Let’s celebrate by listening to the Jets and gazing at enormous butter sculptures. 🎂✈️🧈

Every drum fill in “Angel from the Coast”.

I left New York yesterday. A few days from now, @chambermonster and I will officially be homeowners in Philly. My stuff is staying in Brooklyn until I go back for it in a few weeks, but it’s all packed up and ready to go. Needless to say, I never expected the final few months of my decade in that impossibly vibrant city to be spent under house arrest. This @wussy_official song had a new resonance… See more →

Nobody writes them like they used to, so it may as well be me. #quarantunes

SCREAM
FROM MY SOUL
FATE
MYSTIFIED
HELL
FOREVER MORE

MAKE HIS FIGHT ON THE HILL IN THE EARLY DAY
CONSTANT CHILL DEEP INSIDE

Just FYI, I’m listening to Ride the Lightning pretty much every day now.

Only time will tell. #quarantunes (feat. @hoyboy_ )

Since we’ve all been stuck at home since mid-March, my friend Sequoia has been hosting delightful trivia nights for friends on Zoom. In Philadelphia, pub trivia is known as “quizzo,” so Sequoia’s weekly event is cleverly dubbed Sequizzo (or, if you don’t have time for all those syllables, Squizzo). This week’s theme was rock and roll, and when I was asked to commandeer a round, I decided to focus on fictional bands. My questions are… See more →

#quarantunes gear

#quarantunes

Ah, the old filling-in-on-drums-at-a-Lita-Ford-gig-with-no-rehearsal-or-setlist dream. A classic of the form.

“A spiritual technician doing important work down in the engine room of the American soul.” 💯 nytimes.com/2020/04/09/mag…

Until now, I always got by on my own. #quarantunes

Fun fact I recently learned: @heartofficial didn’t write this song and they weren’t the first to record it (though their version is the best).

When the night falls, my lonely heart calls. #quarantunes

Had some help from my buddy @username_final.final_final on this one, as well as some last-minute EQ magic from @larrylegend. 🙌🏻

They just wanna. #quarantunes

Some girls like to buy new shoes and others like driving trucks and wearing tattoos. There’s only one thing they all like a bunch. Girls, they wanna have lunch. Girls just wanna have lunch. #quarantunes

RIP Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, an artist as unadulterated as they come.

Today is Karen Carpenter’s 70th birthday. We didn’t deserve her. youtube.com/watch?v=sdHyzG…

@manorastroman_official still kicks ass, even if @market.hotel’s sightlines do not.

Neil Peart, Sean Reinert, Reed Mullin. Valhalla is forming quite the percussion ensemble this month. 😞

If you know a better live band than the Sadies, you live a life of riches.

Trying to nail all the drum fills at my desk as quietly as I can

RIP Neil Peart, the reason air drumming was invented. This sucks. Fuck cancer. 💔 rollingstone.com/music/music-ne…

My immune system didn’t do me many favors in 2019. I was sick on five or six separate occasions in the first half of the year, including an obnoxious bout of bronchitis that lasted the entire month of February. Luckily that didn’t stop me from having an adventurous and fulfilling year, and for the first time in my four years at ProPublica, I used every single one of my vacation days.

Projects

My first three… See more →

Was it just one mischievous teenager and one gullible adult that started all you doofuses talking about how music “slaps”?

Sometime during the development of Tinnitus Tracker, it occurred to me that color would be a good way to give its many entries—which span nearly three decades—a sense of time and place. Colors would change with the seasons and fade over time. In effect, every single day of the past 30 years would have a unique color scheme, each day looking slightly different than the day before. As a bonus, the color’s constant flux as… See more →

I was feeling like a slug earlier and the devil on one shoulder told me to skip this show. But the angel an the other shoulder was like, “This excellent band traveled all the way from Busan to play their music for you. Are you really going to deprive them of even one smiling face to greet them?” Thanks, angel.

Didn’t listen to a ton of music this year, but my top artists are dominated by women and vagina slang, so 👍🏻