The bassist for “Weird Al” Yankovic is Stephen Jay, a musical genius. One of his best songs is titled “Deny the Accuser.” I’m being flooded with attempts to talk me out of my contention that Thomas DiMassimo’s attack on Donald Trump was an Islamic State dry run. You need to understand something: I wrote that…
A recycled post
January 24, 2015
I’m too tired to write a new post, so here’s a recycled one from my old Website. I spent the day gathering video and photos in preparation for the Pierre Rehov interview. My swinish neighbors are having their weekly deafening party. Also, in two weeks Brother Cat has gone from a creature afraid of his…
A Druid in Los Angeles
November 12, 2014
Stephen Jay is a druid. He’s also been “Weird Al” Yankovic’s bassist for over thirty years. However, he’s also a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, lyricist, and classically trained composer who studied with John Cage, Lukas Foss, Max Neuhaus, and Charles Wuorinen, and he’s a music ethnographer who’s traveled the world playing with and recording folk musicians from…
The music of the spheres
June 20, 2014
There are certain phrases that are so elegant that they sound inevitable. Tim thinks “meandering belligerence” is one. I wish I’d coined it! To me “Pink Panther” is a great example. Also “the music of the spheres.” The phrase “music of the spheres” refers to the intertwined relationship between the structures of music and those…
This is real
May 31, 2014
I just learned of Cameron Carpenter. Last night I had a strange nightmare in which I attended a NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) show and tried to buddy up to the bassist Stanley Clarke. He looked just like Jimi Hendrix and refused to acknowledge me. I rubbed my face against his as he made…
The best concert I ever saw
February 10, 2014
I can’t count the number of concerts, live shows, or performances I’ve seen. The most professional was David Lee Roth in Tokyo, with Steve Vai on guitar, Gregg Bissonette on drums, and Matt Bissonette on bass. There was literally not a single wasted second. I’ve never seen a band work harder for its money. After…
Mike Albee heads for the hills
February 3, 2014
UPDATE: Now Sandpiper Publicity’s Website is back up. Since this was a fun post to write, I’ll leave it up too. * * * Mike Albee has taken down the website for Sandpiper Publicity. When things get too hot for Mike and his lovely wife Lura Dold, they close up shop. But he’ll be back….
I AM sorry but go away
December 28, 2013
August 20, 2012, was not a good day. I learned that someone was not at all who I thought. It was genuinely horrifying because I discovered that I’d been dealing with an insane person. She’d hid her insanity relatively well, but as always, I denied the little signs that things were awry. In August of…
Is female beauty in fiction really a problem?
November 5, 2013
The novelist Adelle Waldman—author of The Love Affairs of Nathanial P.—recently wrote a piece for The New Yorker titled “‘A First-Rate Girl’: The Problem of Female Beauty.” In it, Waldman says the following: You’d think it would also be a rich subject for fiction writers—after all, our attitudes about beauty and attraction are tightly bound…
My cyber self is born
September 6, 2013
My Extravagumbo Website—the one you’re reading—is finally online. Its nine months of gestation matched my own, and its course in life seems destined to match my own. Welcome to the world, cyber self! Fasten your seat belt, take your Dramamine, and strap on that cup. You’re gonna need it! Here’s the battle your daddy fought…