Last weekend was my grandmother’s Celebration of Life. It would have been her 92nd birthday. We all had margaritas (it was also Cinco de Mayo; I had three) and told funny stories about her life. It was a blast, a good closure and celebration to a woman who meant a lot to a lot of people. (more…)

The problem with so-called best-of lists, is that they are really just a collection of items organized based on experience and time, in that there will be plenty of albums heard the following year and beyond that will hold just as much weight as these we dub as “Best.” So, as of right now, at this particular time in the tail end of 2010 and the first moments of 2011, these albums are the best. There’s no question about it; it will change. My next list (which I’ve started, but may take a while to publish) is dubbed, paraphrase: the best albums I didn’t check out in 2011 for some reason or another. (more…)

It appears there is truth behind the popular phrase about time speeding by the older you get. After hitting the ripe age of 30 back in September and taking a nice little road trip from my home north of Seattle to the Southwest town of Albuquerque at the end of that month, time seems to have slipped by with ease. And it appears I haven’t done one of these podcast things since July! (more…)

Kelley Stoltz’s new single, “I Don’t Get That”, is something of another time. One listen and we find ourselves reeling in an era when music was intended to set us off; when the sun could be felt through the speakers. A simple, rugged guitar progression and centric sultry sixties throwback rhythm feed our appetite as the kind of warm and vagrant pop music we want to hear. It’s the type of song we would’ve stayed up late to listen to, hiding our radios under our pillows so mom wouldn’t know we were listening to that dirty rock music. Though his sound is not a huge divergence from the glory days of the Brit-rock invasion, Stoltz makes pop music the way it’s remembered and hoped to be. (more…)