Music writing





In late 2005, as a fledgling intern at The Source, I was dispatched to downtown Brooklyn to document the Murder inc. Records money-alundering trial.

Since then I have worked as an assistant editor at the original rock criticism mag, Crawdaddy!, and earned my MA in arts journalism from USC, where I studied arts criticism under esteemed classical music critic Tim Page.

Currently I'm covering Bay Area happenings for SF Weekly, East Bay Express, Crawdaddy!, and others.
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Features and Interviews


Dan the Automator: Mastering two decades of audio alchemy
(crawdaddy!, 23 April 2010)





In the late ’80s, at a house party in Stockton, California, Dan the Automator got his skills checked.

“I thought I was a pretty good DJ,” Automator told Crawdaddy! over a steak tostada near his Mission District studio recently. “In retrospect, I was probably an okay DJ, you know what I mean? Anyway, I’m DJing this party, and in the middle of the party they had this little DJ battle, which was not even common back then even. These two little kids come up there, and just rip it, right? I’m just like, ‘Yea, I’m not gonna be able to do that. I might as well think about other stuff.’ Seriously. If just two local kids can go up there and do that, then I’m not gonna be able to do that. But then it turns out that one was Q-Bert and one was Mixmaster Mike. But this was before they were Q-Bert and Mixmaster Mike.” read more


Mix Master Mike Tackles Dubstep:
Famed DJ sustains his career by continuing to experiment
(east bay express, 7 april 2010)


..."This is aggressive hip-hop, dubstep, electro, breaks, blended in with the hardcore psychedelic scratching. I change every year for some reason," explained Mike. "Now that I'm into dubstep, my whole outlook on music has changed. It's like, it's still hip-hop, but it's [in] other forms. I mean, I make dubstep sound like hip-hop; I make electro sound like hip-hop. It's aggressive--I'll put it that way."

Through all the aggression, Mike's dry humor, which in the past has included the well-timed use of pop culture cues like the Jetsons' jingle, still occasionally shines through. On "Goin' Down in this Bitch," The Youngbloodz' Lil Jon-laced "Drankin' Patnaz" is juxtaposed with opera samples; and on the "Dipset Outro," a ferocious Jack Black lends his growling recommendation that "Mix Master Mike dominates the realm of intensity!" read more


(mixmaster mike and dj shortkut at yoshi's -- 10 april 2010)

Gil Scott-Heron's evolution (will not be televised)
(sf weekly, 10 march 2010)


When "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" was rerecorded for the 1971 Pieces of a Man record, Scott-Heron's proto-rap was set atop a simple but incredibly funky rhythm section comprising drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie and bassist Ron Carter. The recording unwittingly etched out a blueprint for hip-hop, an action so influential that Scott-Heron has been dubbed the "Godfather of Hip-Hop" — a title he's unsure about.

"If it's meant as a compliment, I guess I'll take it," he says, speaking by phone from his office in East Harlem. "But I never really thought of myself in those terms." Regardless of whether he meant to launch a million mikes, he accepted the elder statesman role when, in 1994, he led off the album Spirits with "Message to the Messengers," in which he warned rappers: "If you're gonna be speakin' for a whole generation [...] Make sure you know the real deal about past situations." read more


The Zen Buddha of the N-Judah
(sf weekly, 3 february 2010)



Richie Cunning
Some San Franciscans make a Mission burrito run as soon as they return to town. Rapper and producer Richie Cunning just takes a deep breath and says, "Oh, thank God." He loves the city's air enough to give it a shout-out on his debut LP, Night Train, a record with a Blue Note look and a Golden Age hip-hop feel. "There's definitely a different smell in different parts of town, but there is always the air," he explains. "In a literal sense, it's not so much the smell as the texture, the moistness of it."

There was plenty of moisture — buckets of it — in the air the day I met Cunning at the High Tide, a cozy Tenderloin dive bar his father used to own. "When I was a wee lad, I used to come here with my dad [while he did] the books on Saturdays and Sundays," he recalls. "I'd just drink 7-Up and grenadine [and play] Pac-Man."read more


My Brother's Keeper:
Bound by honor, Chris Gotti proves that blood is thicker than water
(the source, february 2006)


"Armed with little more than hearsay and coincidence, federal prosecutors struggled in their attempts to paint Chris [Gotti] and his brother [Irv Gotti] as money launderers. One of the case's strangest moments was the erratic testimony of Donnell Nichols. A former Murder Inc. intern who claimed to be president of the company, Nichols reported to have personally witnessewd Chris in the act of money laundering.

"'I thought he was homeless. I never hired him. I gave him a new identity,' remembers Chris of his generosity toward Nichols. 'I changed his life and he comes to bite me in the ass.'

"Another of the prosecutors' nonsensical arguments involved a Baltimore Vice Squad officer laying out Chris' personal gambling records. 'Who keeps gambling records?,' asks Chris. 'I keep gambling records. I always wanna know if I'm winning or losing.' But if it's that simple, why did the prosecution spend so much time on the matter? 'From a gambler's standpoint, they was grasping at straws.'"
Danny Kalb

Danny Kalb:
How to have fun and still play the blues
(crawdaddy!, 18 february 2009)


Danny Kalb, a 'commie kid' who grew up with folk music in the house but always ground his axe in his own fashion, was paid 75 bucks for two acoustic blues numbers on an LP that moved 300,000 units. The record was a compilation, 'The Blues Project.'

The Danny Kalb model has always sought to push music in a different direction. On the Blues Project's 'Projections,' their first studio album and their only studio recording of the classic line-up, they amplify the Delta Blues with Chicago electricity and elevate it in an attempt to capture 'the highest aesthetic forms but in the R&B genre.' 'Flute Thing' is a jazz jam helmed by flautist Andy Kulberg; 'Steve’s Song,' by Steve Katz, is an elegant psychedelic pop song with a hint of the baroque. But at the root of everything is the blues, and this model was set forth by Kalb on the previously mentioned 'Blues Project.'

Crawdaddy!: [So] you grew up in the city? In Brooklyn?

Kalb: Born in Brooklyn and grew up in Mount Vernon.

Already tired of my line of questioning, Kalb picks up his huge, acoustic Gibson and plays, giving me a taste of this funky folk music. Taken aback by the musical outburst, I can think of nothing but to ask the make of his guitar. Before I can even finish the question--

Kalb: It’s a J-200. Same guitar as Gary Davis played. We all got these—Dave Van Ronk had one. So I copied both Dave, my teacher, and Gary Davis, his mentor. read more


The ever-mutating Mutantes
(crawdaddy!, 10 december 2009)



Fans are waiting outside of the Independent for the doors to open, but inside Os Mutantes is staggering through their soundcheck. I’m not sure what’s wrong, but there are numerous disagreements being conducted in Portuguese. Making matters worse is that lead singer and guitarist Sérgio Dias is sleeping off exhaustion at the hotel while everyone else tries to figure out all the knobs on his incredibly elaborate guitar.

Later, backstage, in his purple cloak, Dias showed me the custom model: “There’s an octave divider, there’s compressor, there’s echo, this is one fuzz, that’s a different fuzz, this is the volume for the bridge pickup, this is the volume of echo in relation to guitar, this is tone, this one fades between the pickups, this turns on the echo, and this turns on the compressor, which is here, this is mono, then all the magnetic pickups with the piezo here, stereo, and off. As you see, it is powered by its own cable because it eats battery a lot. Actually, one of the lights fell down there. I have to fix it.”

Guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Vitor Trida and bassist Vinicius Junqueria struggle to get the massive axe under control, and after a fierce shriek of feedback, one of the soundguys calls out, “By the way, that’s not the piezo. It’s on the other guitar.” The band runs through the complicated prog-rock number “Jardim Elétrico” without incident. “It’s okay?” asks keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist Henrique Peters. “Yeah,” says the soundman. Just then, one of the guitars burps up a cloud of static. “Wait,” asks the soundman. “What’s that?” Don’t worry,” says Peters with a smile. “It will be fixed.” read more


An interview with the Dodos
(crawdaddy!, 25 june 2008)


"San Francisco’s avian hope, the Dodos, were greeted with a hero’s welcome at the Independent last week after returning from a three-week tour of Europe. Comrades Thee Oh Sees and Dreamdate played the opening slots while the Dodos’ Meric Long and Logan Kroeber cleaned up the sold-out crowd with furious fingerpicking and reconstructed 6/8 rhythms. During Thee Oh Sees’ raucous soundcheck, 'Crawdaddy!' got a chance to talk with Long and Kroeber about Europe, Dublin’s Crawdaddy Club, and the Dodos’ quick flight to the top of the indie rock shortlist.

Crawdaddy!: Was this your first time touring Europe?

Meric Long: Yeah, it was good. The crowds were awesome for being our first time over there.

Crawdaddy!: What were your favorite towns? Interview with the Dodos

Interview with the Dodos
Logan Kroeber: Amsterdam, but not for the reasons you think… smoked a little bit of hash there, but it was our driver who bought it. It was just a beautiful town, really sort of a romantic town. Every street you turn down there’s some bridge over a canal and boats everywhere. It seemed even more of a romantic place than Paris even. I was really surprised by the cleanly and romantic—

Long: Well, we didn’t see the Red Light District, so maybe—

Kroeber: Yeah, yeah, true.

Long: We missed out on all the—

Kroeber: The skeez.

Long: The snuffs.

read more

The time is now:
Sa-Ra counts down to their debut 
(wax poetics, july 2007)


"'We're about to show these motherfuckers what time it is,' says Om'Mas Keith, who established Sa-Ra Creative Partners with Taz Arnold and Safiq Husayn. Speaking of their debut LP, 'The Hollywood Recordings,' Om'Mas's vigor is understandable, because, as Taz recounts, 'We have recorded, over the past five years, about three to four albums' worth of material, and we haven't released an album yet.'

"Sa-Ra's previous full-length effort, 'Black Fuzz,' is currently embroiled in the fallout from the demise of Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music. Om'Mas is respectfully vague on the issue: 'You know, we're going through some restructuring as it pertains to that whole thing. So I'm not really at liberty to talk.'

"Amidst the disarray at G.O.O.D., a rumor surfaced that a member of Sa-Ra was splitting. Taz jokes about the issue, 'I thought it was exciting when I heard that rumor. I was like, damn, that's big.'"

Records reviews


J-Dilla / Jay Dee -- Donuts
(the source, february 2006)


"A piercingly ironic 'Outro' invokes recently-deceased beatsmith J-Dilla on this curious ode to the deconstruction of Hip-Hop; harpoon sirens wail alongside soul loops as Dilla forges a romp through blunted instrumentaals. Composed principally on an SP-303 sampler while he was hospitalized last summer, Dilla's 'Donuts' has the scent of cabin-fever. Blithely assembled and frenetically paced, only the ridiculously catchy 'Workinonit' clocks in at more than two minutes. But the 31-joint collection is rooted in the aesthetic of the sample: 'Mash' twists a catchy piano hook and 'Stepson fo the Clapper' is a sort of bastard offspring of live music, in which the crowd's roar is manipulated via fader. 'Donuts' is an obtuse art-house massacre that no self-respecting beat junkie should overlook."


Joe Jackson, Mike's Murder

Joe Jackson -- Mike's Murder OST
(crawdaddy!, 29 november 2009)


Joe Jackson: Classical composer, post-punk impresario, sometime swinger, and musician responsible for a handful of little-known soundtracks. The best known are: Tucker: The Man and His Dream (flopped; soundtrack out of print), Queens Logic (flopped; Jackson’s score omitted from official soundtrack), and Mike’s Murder (flopped; soundtrack broke the Top 100; score almost entirely stripped from movie). Mike’s Murder could have been a solid follow-up to Jackson’s 1982 chart-topper Night and Day. Instead, it sunk along with the movie it accompanied.

[...]The record begins with the upbeat “Cosmopolitan”, a boastful song about a transplant who’s really made it: “And no one touches me,” the narrator claims, “Unless it’s the way I want it to be / I know I read the right magazines.” In “Laundromat Monday”, he yearns for home cooking: “I’m gonna change the world / But not today / Think I’ll just go get drunk / Down on Avenue A.”

Musically, the record shines. Jackson carves out spots for his arsenal of keyboards: Piano, vibraphone, organ, Prophet V synth, and so on. Graham Maby’s bass work is strong and consistent, and finds room to flourish; on “Cosmopolitan”, he holds tight to a tense note, refusing to let the song resolve itself. Those who like Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out” (from his immediately prior record Night and Day) will find that that song’s synth bassline is almost facsimiled on “Memphis”, and to good effect. Side two is all instrumental film-scoring, but not half bad. read more


Flying Lotus -- Cosmogramma
(east bay express, 5 may 2010)


Cosmogramma erupts with "Clock Catcher," which boomerangs between an eight-bit arcade massacre and the soothing lulls of Rebekah Raff's harp. From there, "Pickled!" keeps time with a two-step break while brooding chords whistle and rumble as they announce another collaborator: Steven "Thundercat" Bruno. Best known as the Suicidal Tendencies bassist, Thundercat packs serious jazz chops and repeatedly takes a crackling midrange approach to his solos. FlyLo also features cousin Ravi Coltrane (tenor sax) and Todd Simon (trumpet), but the key element is the string arrangements of jazz/hip-hop orchestrator Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. This dynamic is immediately put on display with "Zodiac Shit," which shuffles between raw snares and looped hi-hat fills while strings simmer and a simple, pentatonic melody blooms. read more


Beck Modern Guilt

Beck -- Modern Guilt
(crawdaddy!, 16 july 2008)


"I got my first listen of this album at a friend’s basement in Brooklyn while seeking respite from a party that was a bummer for a couple of reasons, and while my friend scooped the files off the internet with a gargantuan mouse and pivoted in a busted wheelchair-turned office chair that gave him the look of Dr. Strangelove, I remarked that this brand of party music would be perfect for the foul melee that was going on upstairs." read more

Passport -- Cross-Collateral 
(wax poetics, 7 june 2007)


"[Klaus] Doldinger (credited as playing tenor and alto sax, Moog, and Mellotron) would later compose the soundtracks for 'Das Boot' and 'The Neverending Story,' and Schultze had already been busy scoring films, so their penchant for filmic overtones is well marked in songs like 'Jadoo,' which could have been the anthem for 'Shaft in Germany,' and the first minute of 'Homunculus,' which could have introduced 'Das Warriors'--had there been such films."

Watermelon Slim and the Workers -- No Paid Holidays 
(crawdaddy!, 25 june 2008)


"Slim’s legend starts back in Vietnam, where he learned how to play slide guitar backwards on a lap dobro with a jagged pick cut from a tin can and his standard-issue Zippo lighter subbing in as slide. Slim is credited as the first Vietnam veteran to release an album, 1973’s self-titled protest blues record Merry Airbrakes, which contains lines like, “If I die in battle / Pick up my AK-47 and fight on.” read more
Walter Becker, Circus Money

Walter Becker -- Circus Money 
(crawdaddy!, 2008)


"The raw pulse of this album is driven by Becker himself, who makes an exciting return to the rhythm section in his old niche as bassist, and drummer Keith Carlock, a young maniac whose precision and creativity has earned him a spot on all recent Steely Dan configurations [...] The fiercely lyrical Becker doesn’t let up for a second with tales of degradation, loss, and dubious love. Those familiar with the Steely Dan oeuvre will have no trouble finding compassion with the losers on this set." read more

Show reviews


176 Keys: SFJAZZ Fest Presents Hiromi and Robert Glasper at the Herbst Theatre
(east bay express, 23 March 2010)


Hiromi and Robert Glasper are two of the most exciting pianists on the scene--and they’re pulling jazz in almost entirely different directions. Glasper often tows a line between jazz and hip-hop, having acted as the music director for many of Mos Def’s live-band shows. And Hiromi is a confluence of a prodigious skill set and a knack for breaking rules.

[...]Hiromi opened the show with Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm.” It was unrecognizable at first, but with a wink and a nod, she threw in a couple blue notes, letting the audience in on her joke. Then she ran all over Gershwin, burning tread, zipping up all 88 keys--then unzipping them--running laps around the melody, hamming it up a hundred different ways. Hiromi plays with superhuman speed, like she’s possessed by the piano--maybe the piano is playing her--maybe someone should pull her away before she collapses.read more


Mos Def celebrates 10th anniversary of Black on Both Sides
(examiner.com, 19 october 2009)


I could sleep through a storm, and somehow I slept through the announcement that Mos Def was visiting Oakland's new nightclub, The New Parish, this past weekend. That's okay. I found out just in time. And while it takes something big to peel me out of bed and away from the Sunday paper at midnight, a Mos Def show is decidedly big. My Blackstar tape--yes, cassette tape--was already in the car, so I just grabbed my camera and hi-tailed it down MLK boulevard to Oakland.



At the door, I heard the show was nearly over. Damn. I made it just in time to see Mos Def rocking out to Detroit pre-punk band Death's "Freakin' Out." (Mos is working on a documentary about the band.) This seemed like the definite end of the show, but Mos was just taking a vocal break. He danced quite a bit actually, picking up a few cues from Michael Jackson. The dearly departed were up front in his mind, as he freestyled and sang prayers for recently fallen icons Mr. Magic and Roc Raida, among many others.

While I didn't hear Black on Both Sides in full, I still caught "Mr. Ni**a" and "Brooklyn." "Brooklyn" was broken into chunks, like the original, pre-album version. One of the verses was set over loops from Roy Ayers' "We Live in Brooklyn, Baby," a song that was popularized for the hip-hop generation by the Digable Planets' "Borough Check."


Mos Def and Gil Scott Heron at Carnegie Hall, New York -- a Jill Newman production
(crawdaddy!, 28 june 2008)


"They billed themselves as Amino Alkaline Orchestra: The Watermelon Syndicate. Riffing on the name, the show began with a video sketch instructing people to eat the whole watermelon: Be proud, don’t try and hide your love of the watermelon by mixing it up with other fruits. This was an important theme of Mos’ show: The old adage Be Yourself. And it’s never sounded truer." read more

Freddie Hubbard at Yoshi's, San Francisco
(jambase, 4 april 2008)


"It was evident early on that something was wrong. After a weak, wobbly solo on opener "Jodo," Freddie Hubbard scoffed and pretended to disdainfully throw his flugelhorn into the audience, which he nearly did [...] Later in the show, his brief, requisite solo complete, he went so far as to fetch a greeting card that a fan had given him and peel it open center-stage during James Spaulding's alto sax solo." read more
Super Furry Animals

Super Furry Animals at Sub 29, Cardiff, UK
(crawdaddy!, 26 may 2009)


"Dark Days/Light Years may, in time, turn out to be the best record in the Furrys’ discography, and if that happens, I’ll boast about drowning in feedback at the first live recital. Until that time, I’ll get to know the album on my own, on a stereo, where it sounds fucking great." read more

Steely Dan at the Greek Theatre, Berkeley, Calif.
(crawdaddy!, 26 july 2008


"As per usual, the rhythm and horn section began the show with an instrumental, but unlike recent tours, which featured jazz standards, this time they performed a medley of two lesser-played Steely Dan numbers, 'Everyone’s Gone to the Movies' and 'The Fez', before letting Keith Carlock menace his drums and reset the tempo for one of the Dan’s lengthier tunes, the politically-charged 'The Royal Scam.'" read more

Anti-Nowhere League at Annie's Social Club, San Francisco 
(crawdaddy!, 11 april 2008)


"Having come straight from work toting a briefcase, I played wallflower, and stuck out amidst the black leather like a, well, like a dealer, apparently, as one man nodded to my case and asked if I could score him some blow (I wonder if Tom Wolfe in his cocaine-colored suit was ever asked such a thing)." read more