See what song was #1 on your birth date and pretend it’s the theme song for your whole life! Makes as much sense as anything else! Mine is “To Know Him is to Love Him.” Here’s another idea: Go back nine months from your birth date and see what your parents might have been listening to when . . . you know . . . Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Music
I Don’t Feel Good
James Brown has prostate cancer — CNN.com Read more →
Chapel of Love
Today’s the day We’ll say “I do” And we’ll never be lonely anymore. — The Dixie Cups, “Chapel of Love” For decades, I thought this was just a happy, sappy little ditty . . . now I wonder if it isn’t one of the most bitterly ironic songs ever written. We’ll love until The end of time And we’ll never be lonely anymore . . . Read more →
What Would Jesus Download?
According to a survey commissioned by the Gospel Music Association, only 10 percent of born-again teens believe that copying CDs for friends and unauthorized music downloading are morally wrong . . . Read more →
Role Model
My son is reading a biography of John Lennon. Here’s what he got out of it so far: “John Lennon got all Cs in school.” I think his mom is going to take the book away from him . . . Read more →
A 10-Year-Old Sings The Beach Boys
“And she’ll have fun, fun, fun till her daddy takes the TV away!” “It’s T-Bird . . . not TV.” “What’s a T-Bird?” Read more →
Song Lyrics That Didn’t Resonate Till Years Later
Living is easy with eyes closed Misunderstanding all you see It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out It doesn’t matter much to me. — Lennon and McCartney, “Strawberry Fields Forever” Read more →
A Bruce Lee Christmas
I’ve been reading Bruce Lee’s Tao of Jeet Kune Do, in which he says that most athletes are not willing to drive themselves hard enough, and that only through extraordinary effort can one unlock the potential of the human body. Read more →
Reverse Performance Anxiety
My son had a very nice piano recital last weekend. He played the right notes, he played the quiet parts quiet and the loud parts loud . . . and yet he had never once, to my knowledge, practiced the piece at home without playing it too loud, too fast, and having a simulated nervous breakdown if anything was said to him about it. I’ve Googled this all day and I can’t figure it out . . . Read more →
My Favorite Xmas Songs
Links go to iTunes samples . . . Read more →
An Evening at Home
I’m trying to listen to classical music with a 10-year-old who won’t stop pretending he’s an intergalactic space admiral: Chopin . . . great composer . . . he was from Earth, wasn’t he? Read more →
In Memoriam: Johnny Cash
Anyone who thinks Johnny Cash wasn’t ready to check out even before his wife died in May has probably not seen the “Hurt” video. I certainly think a person in ill health can voluntarily release his or her grip on life . . . we had a family member with cancer who really wanted to die at home, but unfortunately she became too ill to care for at home. The night the family decided that she’d have to be hospitalized, she died . . . Read more →
Song Lyrics That Didn’t Resonate Until 25 Years Later
I’ve been aware of the time going by They say in the end it’s the wink of an eye. — Jackson Browne, “The Pretender” (1976) Read more →
Worst Band of All Time
Blender magazine has named Insane Clown Posse as the worst band of all time, although I personally think this does a great disservice to Rush — the band, not the radio guy. Read more →
Introducing a 9-Year-Old to Johnny Cash
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine I keep my eyes wide open all the time . . . “Really? How do you sleep?” Read more →
Musical Humor
Q: What do you get when you drop a piano down a mine shaft? A: A flat minor. Q: Why did the chicken cross the road? A: To get away from the bassoon recital. Read more →
Useless and Pointless Knowledge
Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain That could hold you, dear lady, from going insane That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain Of your useless and pointless knowledge. — Bob Dylan, “Tombstone Blues” “I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while–just once in a while–there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn’t, it’s just a disgusting waste of time!” — J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust. — T.S. Eliot, “The Rock” Read more →
Introducing a 9-Year-Old to Van Morrison
I can hear her heartbeat for a thousand miles . . . “That’s impossible!” Read more →
Different Drummers
In high school, I was in the school orchestra. There were no auditions; it was just a class you could sign up for, independent of whether or not you had any musical ability. And when a student with no musical ability signed up for the orchestra, what transpired was something like this: Director: What instrument do you play? Student: I don’t really play an instrument. Director: You’re in the percussion section. There were three or four of us in the percussion section who could actually read music and play it, so it was kind of depressing that it was mainly a backwater where musical illiterates were sent to bang on cowbells . . . I recollected my days as a high-school percussionist today when one of our tech leads — tech leads — pulled up some javadocs and announced that a method we were using was “depreciated.” Now if this… Read more →
Disqualification
Alessio Cioni, one of the finalists at the Rachmaninoff International Competition and Festival, not only did not win, he was actually disqualified for playing too poorly. Read more →