averyfineline

As several of you have noted already to me in email, Jim Hamill died this morning. When we started this discussion a few weeks back, I had no idea he was as ill as it now appears he was. So I can’t claim any real foresight here, but in retrospect, it was a well-timed conversation, […]

Over at her WAJ blog, the songwriter Sue C. Smith has been posting installments of an extended reflection on discovering her particular gifts as a writer (in her case, it was realizing she was a lyricist and not necessarily a musical composer). This is not just a wonderfully told series of anecdotes about coming up […]

From Bill’s Blah Blah, a delightful tale of what can go wrong even when things go right for the up-and-coming songwriter in Nashville cutting a work tape (a quick and dirty recording of a newly written song to hear how it runs through as a whole) on the fly. Money quote:
We’re doing OK; it is just […]

Now that I have your attention … of course it does.

Naturally, though, I have a longer answer too. In a recent post I referred to a “sexed-up” version of “Get Away Jordan” and some readers thought I was implying that EHSSQ uses sex in some way to sell their music. This made me chuckle at […]

It’s official. The SN Fan Awards show is moving to Saturday night. I’ve already hashed out most of what I have to say about all this in the original post. The bottom line on the move is, it’s worth a try, I guess (and Saturday night is smarter than a per-head showcase, which I stand […]

So it seems that EHSSQ’s “Get Away Jordan” will go No. 1 in the next SN chart. I’ve been getting lots of email about it and, as you might have already seen, several comments. What I find interesting about all these comments is that no one assumes the No. 1 position actually reflects the popularity […]

Back to our charting discussion: David Bruce Murray has a fairly innovative idea for ways to track chart data inexpensively and more or less reliably using iTunes. Check it out here and here. I’ll leave it up to people who actually do this sort of thing for a living to say whether or not it’s […]

If you enjoy reading about the transporting experience of really feeling good music in a live setting, go read songwriter Joel Lindsey’s Annie Lenox concert report. For our purposes today, class, we’re going to focus on a rabbit Lindsey chases for a few sentences in the middle of his paean to Annie. Thus Lindsey:
I […]

Way back when, this comment coupled with this article (hat tip, Martin) got me thinking about the Isaacs. Specifically, why didn’t or haven’t they left a more profound impression on the musical world? Or have they, and I just don’t know where to look? In this alleged age of the cross-over, poly-generic, stylistically diverse, mult-repurposeable […]

Two emails suggest that on the heels of their bass singer leaving earlier this week, Mercy’s Mark has disbanded. Anyone else heard this? If it’s true, it’s the sad but perhaps, uhm, merciful conclusion to the slow deterioration of a group that debuted with an explosion of great promise, and then dwindled off into mediocrity.
Update: […]