Category: Music Feature

City Musicians Are Going Rural: William Ryan Fritch, Zammuto, and Monome for Modern Farmer

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READ IT AT MODERN FARMER

Made it into Modern Farmer right before the big shakeup—my editor published this, and walked two days later. This piece is close to my heart, and not just because it features one of my favorite humans, William Ryan Fritch, plus two other dudes I deeply admire: the Books co-founder Nick Zammuto and Monome inventor Brian Crabtree. It’s about the collision of old world and new—the fact that modern technology affords us the opportunity to live off the grid. This means artists and aesthetes like these can set up shop in spaces far more conducive to inspiration than the urban environs. I hope this can evolve into a bigger project for me and photographer Nathaniel Wood, who shot Willow and Jaden Smith about an hour before we road-tripped in his Prius to the chicken-rich farmlands of Petaluma. (Sorry about the dog bite, buddy.) Continue reading →

Billboard: Fall Out Boy’s Second Chance

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READ IT AT BILLBOARD (in print too)

I went deep with Patrick Stump, Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman, and Andy Hurley backstage at The Voice before (and after) they performed “Centuries” for the show. Fun fact: three out of four of these dudes were expecting babies while making the new album, American Beauty/American Psycho. Dads abound! Fall Out Boyz II Men, amirite? No? Fine. Photo by Chris Stanford.

SPIN Cover: TV on the Radio Leave It Behind

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READ IT ON SPIN

They’ve been my favorite band since I heard the Young Liars EP in the old Filter offices back in 2003 (shout-out Wired‘s Steven Leckart for passing me the promo back then) and I’ve spilled ink on them every release since. This week, TV on the Radio and I reunite for a SPIN cover that’s all about growing up. No, that sounds boring. It’s actually about being unafraid to don Bermuda shorts and grin at a roiling sea made of pure liquid fear. It gets surreal somewhere between the Cheech & Chong reference and the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance citation, and Kyp Malone makes a couple of semen jokes along the way. The new album is called Seeds, after all.

For pure posterity’s sake, here’s a brief 2013 interview with Tunde Adebimpe.

The Lost SPIN Features: Soundgarden Returns, Passion Pit Gigs MSG, and Ghost Town Looms

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READ MORE AT SPIN

Posterity Post: I wrote thousands of articles while on staff at SPIN and blogged none of them.

Animal Instinct: The Return of Soundgarden — After 16 years of studio silence, the grunge gods return, hungry, with their triumphant King Animal. I meet Chris Cornell and his pretty blue eyes.

How Are Passion Pit Playing Madison Square Garden? — An honest question with a pretty interesting answer. This is Led Zeppelin territory. MJ. The Boss. Ali and Frazier. And now…

Ghost Town Social Media’d Their Way to Success — A sound that evokes a bubble-goth Linkin Park. A social-media strategy that’s part-savvy, part-kismet. They’re stars in an ephemeral world.

SPIN Cover: Mr. Grohl’s Cabinet of Wonder

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READ MORE AT SPIN

Posterity Post: I wrote thousands of articles while on staff at SPIN and blogged none of them.

In early 2013, I flew to the snowy wilds of Utah in order to track, capture, and question Dave Grohl, the Nirvana drummer, Foo Fighters boss, and Sound City filmmaker notorious for his avoidance of the press… Okay, Grohl loves a camera and a microphone, but still. This is a special story about a special dude making a special movie about a special piece of studio equipment. With photos by my shutterbug brother from another mother, Nathaniel Wood. We combined forces to capture Grohl’s Park City gig with Stevie Nicks too. Also, Slipknot.

An Interview With Toro y Moi’s Chaz Bundick

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One of our favorite young music-making weirdos of the past five years is Chaz Bundick — a dude better known as Les Sins and best known as Toro y Moi. Befitting his chosen aliases, he’s a musical polyglot, weaving psych-rock and summery pop into rap beats and dance pulse. Unsurprisingly, Bundick is a sharp guy with a sweet disposition, as we learned first hand upon sitting down with him at a coffee shop across from the SPIN offices in Hollywood. Read here:

Done? Have some B-sides:

Old Stuff Starts Here…

This site was relaunched in November of 2015, but the blog’s been around since April of 2009. It’s been through many changes, so what lies beyond is almost certainly not formatted properly and often (yuck) written in third person. It’s also incomplete. I’m still filling in my two-plus years as a SPIN staffer, and moving even older posts over to this site. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Passin’ Me By: The Pharcyde Look Back 20 Years On

First things first. Twenty years ago, friends, this happened:

We were a tender 10 years old at the time, but Bay Area born and bred, so you best believe those lovelorn, summertime emanations beat on our rap-seasoned eardrums. Which is why it was a particularly special pleasure to interview Fatlip and Slimkid3, responsible for the most memorable verses on “Passin’ Me By,” as well as producer J-Swift and Delicious Vinyl head Mike Ross, about the birth of that unusual ode to unrequited love and its legacy since. Our favorite insight:

“I found Quincy Jones’ ‘Summer in the City’ and a second loop that I can’t remember. We were gonna do two beats and Bootie Brown was like, ‘Man, let’s just combine them.’ So we did that, and then we ended up renting The Doors. We were on shrooms or some shit, all wigged out watching Val Kilmer transform into Jim Morrison, and right after, Fatlip walks into the booth and starts screaming like Morrison: ‘She keeps on passin’ me by!'” — J-Swift

So if you haven’t already, bounce over to SPIN to read the entire thing.