A love letter to my wife on our 15th anniversary, masquerading as a blog post about culture.

The other night we were having socially-distanced drinks with friends-and-fellow-NYC-transplants Rachel and Josh, engaged in a lively debate about the merits and pitfalls of genre labeling. Josh shared that he had extensively studied the history of musical improvisation from 1300 to today. This fact alone is worthy of a follow-up post, but suffice it toContinue reading “A love letter to my wife on our 15th anniversary, masquerading as a blog post about culture.”

A Thin Line Between Love and Hate

The recent kerfuffle between Robin Thicke and Marvin Gaye’s estate raises an interesting issue for this project. It reminds us that the role of influence, and particularly the degree of influence that one work has on another, can be serious business. The licensing of a Song of The Summer like Blurred Lines can net theContinue reading “A Thin Line Between Love and Hate”

Future topic guide – Vol. 1

Always fun to see what Google thinks you are going to search for.  We just typed “what influenced” and autofill kicked in from there.  We guess the public is telling us what we should cover with the blog: Also should note that we did this same search this morning and Elvis Presley was the firstContinue reading “Future topic guide – Vol. 1”