Music

Music by Eric

28 Songs that Changed My Life: Michael Jackson, “Thriller” (4 of 28)

February 4, 2021 0 Comments

Heck, not just the song. The entire damn album. If you were breathing in the early to mid 1980s, you couldn’t escape it. It was HUGE. Thriller was one of the biggest albums of all time. Not counting Star Wars story records, Thriller was the first record I owned that was truly mine. Asked for it for Christmas, got it on vinyl, and listened to it endlessly on my crummy turntable. It was jam-packed with big songs, from the title track to “Beat It” to “Billie Jean,” “The Girl Is Mine,” “Human Nature,” and others. Michael Jackson was a hit-making force of nature. I grew out of being an active fan, moving towards rock music and other genres, but my childhood experience with Thriller left…
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Music

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28 Songs that Changed My Life: John Coltrane, “A Love Supreme” (2 of 28)

February 2, 2021 0 Comments

Prior to my journey into jazz beginning (which largely started with Miles Davis and the legendary Kind of Blue), all I knew of John Coltrane was a fleeting reference in a U2 song. I assumed their reference to A Love Supreme was because it was some important or influential work, but I was young and not nearly as musically adventurous as I’d become, so I did as I often did and didn’t think much about it. Then jazz happened to me. I discovered how great escape it was. How it could put me at ease and transport me somewhere else. It began to influence my own freeform, meandering music. I’d first heard Coltrane on Davis’ classic records of the mid-to-late 1950s and it made me…
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Music, Random Musings

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28 Songs that Changed My Life: Public Enemy, “Night of the Living Baseheads” (1 of 28)

February 1, 2021 0 Comments

It’s no exaggeration to say that Public Enemy helped change how I view the world. Much like George Orwell’s 1984, it helped me clarify thoughts I’d had and refine my overall worldview, putting to words an sounds the way I saw politicians, authority figures, media, justice, and more. I’ve extensively written about Public Enemy’s impact on me, so here I’m going to skip the formalities and get right to the song. I still remember the day I first saw the video for “Night of the Living Baseheads.” The blaring horns, pounding rhythm, thought-provoking lyrics, and insane multimedia assault of a music video was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Growing up as a sheltered white kid in a tiny New Jersey town (which I helped…
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Music, Random Musings

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In A Silent Way is the semi-overlooked Miles Davis masterpiece you need in your life

December 18, 2020 1 Comment

When I first discovered the music of Miles Davis in the late 1990s, it was something of a musical awakening for me. It came during a time when I was setting aside the strident music “purity” of my youth — you know how some people will only listen to a specific kind of music and ONLY that kind of music? — and exploring new frontiers in sound. Miles Davis certainly provided that. His personal story was compelling, but he was more than an intriguing figure. He had the tunes to back it up. LOTS of them, an ever-shifting career filled with experimentation and attempts to push the boundaries of what he could do with his music. The man knew no rules. He CREATED rules, over…
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Music, Random Musings, Videos, Works by Eric

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Miles Davis, music, and toll of institutional racism

June 4, 2020 1 Comment

Miles Davis has been one of my favorite artists for close to 25 years. If I started going on about how his work has touched me, the scope of his influence, and the importance of his creative legacy, I’d be here all night. The act of expression through creation is sacred to me, and few exemplify this more powerfully than Miles Davis. Yet Youtuber Adam Neely makes an excellent point in the video below: A now infamous police brutality incident in 1959, just after the release of Davis’ masterful Kind of Blue album, almost robbed the world of 30 more years of groundbreaking music. It’s an unfortunate story all on its own, but it’s just one thread in a much larger tapestry. Miles was just…
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Music, Politics, Random Musings, Rants

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