When Messy Production Meets Muddled Genius Look, I get it. “Exile on Main Street” is supposed to be the holy grail of rock and roll excess turned into artistic triumph. It’s the album where the Rolling Stones, holed up in a French mansion like debauched aristocrats avoiding the revolution, somehow stumbled into greatness. But after…
A Sonic Revolution in 98 BPM If a bomb went off in a recording studio while a political science lecture, a James Brown concert, and a Black Panther rally were simultaneously taking place, the resulting explosion might sound something like Public Enemy’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.” Released in 1988,…
London Calling: When Punk Found Its Library Card Look, let’s get something straight – most punk bands in 1979 were still trying to figure out how many safety pins they could stick through their ears before tetanus became a real concern. Meanwhile, The Clash dropped “London Calling,” an album so ambitious it makes most rock…
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy: When Ego Achieves Its Final Form Look, let’s address the elephant-sized ego in the room right off the bat – Kanye West might be the most insufferable human being to ever grace a VMAs stage (and that’s saying something). But sometimes, just sometimes, an artist’s messiah complex actually delivers something…
Learning is subjective. I learn from reading, from podcasts, from observing and listening but to actively seek out learning for its own sake is something that not a lot of people do. Throughout my life I’ve learned quite a few things simply because of my ADHD – I find something interesting, hyperfocus on it for…
Well OK this one was hard, not because I’m a sugar junkie (although I do enjoy a treat now and then) I have two small kids who always want a little sweet dessert and a wife who helpfully bring home leftover treats from events and just leaves them on the counter in plain view. So,…
I’m not sure what this was going to be like – I was a diet soda fiend. I had a diet coke for breakfast, for lunch, and a couple with dinner. Was it the caffeine? The bubbles? The familiarity? I was going to find out – and the results were.. inconclusive. The first thing I…
When I saw the Nirvana unplugged set on MTV I fell in love with the Martin D-18 guitar. The sounds coming out of it were mesmerizing and the tone was so pure in how it blended with Kurt’s voice. I swore that one day I would own a D-18. At the time I could definitely…
I’ve always liked being in the woods – as a child I would explore the scrub pine forest that was our backyard growing up. We’d wander around the white sands looking for cool stuff and just enjoying the primal feeling of being in nature, smelling the strong scent of pine and the earthy petrichor of…
In “The Infinite Game”, Simon Sinek introduces the concept of the “infinite game” – a fundamental shift in how we approach competition, success, and the purpose of business. Sinek contrasts the “finite game” with the “infinite game”. Finite games have clear rules, agreed-upon players, and a defined end point where a winner is declared. Examples…