music

A collection of 8 posts

New podcasts from Streetlamp Media - Pitch! and Before the Fade

news 2 min read New podcasts from Streetlamp Media - Pitch! and Before the Fade

This is an exciting week. In my previous post, I hinted at several upcoming announcements. Today we've got two of them.

Last year, I met two filmmakers working in Los Angeles. Leah Saint Marie and Angel Daahoud Murphy. Leah is a former investigative journalist. Now a screenwriter and director, she has multiple writing and filmmaking awards under her belt. Angel is a multifaceted actor, writer, and musician. Together, they're creating two great new podcasts, and my Streetlamp Media company is helping to produce and distribute.

The first podcast, Before the Fade, is a precursor to a documentary Angel plans called

Covering the Beatles' 'Eight Days a Week' and Recreating the Ed Sullivan Show using Unreal Engine 5

Video video 1 min read

The past few months marked the last summer before my daughters were both away at college. We passed the time working on a project together.  It combines all our interests, from music to engineering to filmmaking. So what was it? Well, we set about recreating the set of the Ed Sullivan Show and performing a cover of Eight Days a Week by the Beatles. Why? You'll have to watch the video to find out.

We used Blender for modeling, Unreal Engine 5 for creating the environment and lighting, Cubase 12 for recording music and vocals, Artlist for crowd noise, a

Mellon Collie and Me: 25 Years Later

life 4 min read Mellon Collie and Me: 25 Years Later

Shortly after midnight on October 24, 1995, I lay in bed, in the dark, my stereo volume low, and, for the first time, heard that famous piano melody drift tenderly from tiny speakers. The album was Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by the Smashing Pumpkins. I had waited in line with friends and hundreds of other kids to snag a copy the moment it went on sale. The piano melody was followed by the triumphant strings of Tonight Tonight. The hard distortion of Jellybelly. The sinking isolation of Zero. I had no idea, in that moment, how familiar those

25 Years Rocketing with the Smashing Pumpkins

music 3 min read 25 Years Rocketing with the Smashing Pumpkins

After a fuzzy, daydreamy guitar intro, Billy Corgan belts out the word Love. That's how a twenty-five year journey begins.

There I was, steering my parents' car through the empty streets of Ottawa, Illinois in the summer of 1994. The windows were open, hot sun heating the dashboard, and that daydreamy guitar intro to the song Rocket began playing on the radio. For some reason, I cranked up the volume.

Soon, I’ll find myself alone / To relax and fade away

Of course, I had known of the Pumpkins before that day.

I turned nineteen years old that summer. I

The Songs We Lose

love 2 min read The Songs We Lose

If I could sing, I’d sing a song for lost songs.

I’d build a room of tunes and wallpaper it with every song we’ve ever shared with those we’ve loved, and I’d sing in it. I’d sing of pain and misery, of beautiful moments and intimate memories. I’d sing of happiness and laughter, of heartbreak and tears, but mostly I’d sing of loss.

We lose so much with love. Our futures, of course. And our hearts. Sometimes our minds and memories.

But must love take our songs as well? That’s just

My 20 Years with Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

music 4 min read My 20 Years with Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

Twenty years ago tonight, my friends and I began what would become, for me at least, a life changing adventure. Our destination: the most prominent music store on campus, Record Service I think it was, on Green Street in Champaign, Illinois. The reason: a midnight release of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the strangely named third album by The Smashing Pumpkins.

We’d all been introduced to the Pumpkins a couple years earlier by Los Angeles native Matt Redman, our teammate and friend. We each had varying degrees of interest in the new album. After all, $20 was a

'How Music Got Free' by Stephen Witt

books 4 min read 'How Music Got Free' by Stephen Witt

I’m not gonna lie. Stephen Witt’s new history of the MP3,  How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy, was something of an impulse purchase and not just because the title kicks ass. I read an interview the author gave in which he touched on the early days of mp3 downloads, Napster, and a cabal of leakers few people knew existed. The nostalgic side of me couldn’t resist.

Let us remember…  It was the late 90s. I was already firmly entrenched in techie land by

50 Ways

parenting 2 min read 50 Ways

During every car ride, a handful of requests emerge from the backseat. Smiley begs for a pacifier and also a second pacifier as backup in case the first escapes her mouth. Smartypants occasionally asks that her window be opened or that the air conditioning be turned off, and sometimes I oblige her whims.

Most often, the request I hear is for some form of musical entertainment. The little hoodlums are seldom happy with Daddy's choice of tunes.

Their requests are consistent and repetitive. They ask for Little Mermaid music, or The Princess and the Pauper soundtrack (a musical Barbie movie