I’ve done a new video segment for the Bill Moyers Journal blog.

After you watch it, please listen to this.

Whenever I hear Baby Boomers complain that nobody writes good protest songs anymore, I force them to shut up while I recite this gem by my good friend and musical collaborator Guy Crundwell:

(more…)

Obviously I’ve been listening to “Under Pressure”. I hadn’t in years, but it started running through my head the other day, so I bought it from iTMS.

And my God, it’s even more fantastic than I remember.

(more…)

I dare you to argue otherwise after listening to this. That’s rock, only with harmonies that most rockers wouldn’t attempt, even though more should.

That piece is the overture from his Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (”Little Threepenny Music”), the chamber suite he wrote from his music from the Threpenny Opera he wrote with Bertolt Brecht. Hearing it made me recall this song (”Song of the Insufficiency of Human Endeavor” in English) from the full … Opera, which is rock, too. Listen to the way it builds from concertina to small ensemble to larger ensemble, harmonies spiralling inevitably outwards.

My friend Matthew Neill Sharp, who records as Mathgeeks and is also a member of my musical group Box Set Authentic, is so prolific a songwriter and recordist that it’s hard to keep up with his output. Which means that every now and then, a truly great song of his slips through the cracks.

The other night, while going through some new material of his, I stumbled on an older song of his that had escaped my attention.

The phrase I’d use is, ahem, ragged glory. Not such a stretch, really, as CSNY must have been one of the Northen Hemisphere bands to have influenced the Mutants’ vocal arrangements. Okay, a stretch. But my friend Peter Bull heard the Swingle Singers in some those arrangements, which was spot on. Overall, a stunning show — my second in a row at the venue, even thought I find it a problematic and unwelcoming place. (Broken Social Scene’s last night there was hands-down the best rock show I’ve seen in five years, maybe more.)

(more…)