laze.net

Garbage Bandcamp pages

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:35:00 -0400

Every so often I’ll search for a rare album and find a link to a Bandcamp page and get momentarily excited about it. But, sadly, it’s clear upon clicking the page that the page is a garbage spam page that has no actual music, no affiliation with the artist, and an album description that just points off to another site.

What’s funny, though, is that I never expected a random tape I self-released in 1997 (and re-released on CD in 2003) that literally maybe 15 people have a copy of would wind up as one of these garbage Bandcamp pages.

I present you with the fake Lyrical Prophets: Flipyawig page (linking to the Wayback Machine version since I plan on reporting the regular version soon). Since pretty much no one will know this, my DJ (Qwik-Cut) and I (Laze) recorded as the Lyrical Prophets from 1992 until 1997 and put out a handful of self-produced, self-released demo tapes. Interestingly, across the ocean at the same time, there was a German group with the same name and, super coincidentally, had a DJ named LAZee. Also, they’ve got a fake album page on Bandcamp, too.

I got a real kick out of the text:

Grab the Flipyawig re release by Lyrical Prophets - ya need this hip hop heat. Listen online now, no excuses. Got beats that slap and rhymes that don’t quit. Download it fast before your ears miss out. Bonus tracks? Oh yeah, they threw those in too. Old school vibes, fresh feel. Wait… did I just hear a flipyawig? Weird name, fire album.

Pretty generic. Definite AI vibes.

But it goes on with a more in depth “review”:

alright so i finally gave the 2003 re-release of Flipyawig by Lyrical Prophets a proper listen and honestly? it’s kinda slept on. not gonna lie, i only checked it cause i stumbled on it in a dusty bin at a thrift store in berlin. looked cool. german hip hop from sylt? that’s random as hell. but i took a chance. first thing-this ain’t your typical stateside rap. it’s got that late-90s underground eu vibe, raw but not trying too hard. the original dropped in ‘97, this version’s got two bonus tracks and came out on Urban Ambiance, which… yeah, never heard of ‘em either. but props for keeping it alive. the album kicks off with “Flipyawig” - that title alone sounds like a sneeze. but the track? solid. heavy bass, Laze spittin’ with this calm confidence. not flashy, just real. he’s the main voice here, handles lead on all tracks, and you can tell he’s the backbone. production’s mostly him too, except track 4 which is Qwik-Cut-different flavor, more chopped-up beats. kinda stands out, not always in a good way. “Born of the Earth” and “Stuck” are the bonus joints. i actually liked “Born of the Earth” more than half the main tracks. deeper vibe, almost spiritual. like if you smoked a joint and walked through a forest at 3am. “Stuck” feels a bit repetitive, though. good rhythm, but doesn’t go anywhere new. some tracks like “Look Over Your Shoulder” and “Ear 2 Ear” hit hard lyrically. they’re talking about real stuff-identity, street life, the grind. not just bragging about kicks and cash. i respect that. “Cracking Teeth” is aggressive in a good way. short, punchy, no filler. love that. but not everything lands. “Supa Man” tries to be anthemic but feels forced. like they wanted a single and overcooked it. and the “Intro” and “Outro”? bare. minimal. could’ve been cooler. felt like afterthoughts. also, the whole thing’s only about 45 minutes. short, but maybe that’s why it doesn’t drag. no track overstays, which is rare these days. only real gripe? the mix is a bit muddy on lower-end speakers. you miss some of the nuance. but on decent headphones? it opens up. little scratches, layered vocals, subtle samples-yeah, it’s there. look, this ain’t Illmatic. but it’s not trying to be. it’s a crew from northern germany doing their thing, staying independent, spitting truth in their own accent. and that’s cool. funny part? i showed it to a friend who’s into grime, and he thought it was british. never guessed it was german. says a lot, honestly. would i recommend it? yeah, but not to everyone. if you’re into raw, no-budget hip hop with soul-def check it. just don’t expect polish. sometimes the cracks let the realness shine through.

So, um, yeah. Weird, right? It goes through and mentions things about specific tracks and the comments are all pretty generic, but I’ve boldfaced a few of the sections that are just otherworldly odd.

There are some downright falsities, too. First of all, I promise you, this album isn’t by the German Lyrical Prophets. I mean, I know because I was there when I made it. Yet, this entire review seems based on that assumption that the album is German. The track listing is also all out of order (“Intro” is apparently the sixth track, lol) and the production mentions are screwy.

Even with all those mistakes and a detectible “style” (mention song and then have quick, descriptive sentence fragments, all lower-case except for track titles, no actual specifics unique to the songs or quotes of lyrics), it still manages to feel kind of human. Running it through two AI detectors, I got literally exact opposite results. Quillbot said it was a 0% chance of being written by AI whereas Pangram said with “high confidence” it was 100% AI written. I side with Pangram.

It goes on to list some similar albums:

Flipyawig re release by Lyrical Prophets similar albums

1. Sorry by Peter Silver - (link removed)

1. Madvillainy by Madvillain - real smooth flows and dope beats, kinda like Flipyawig but with more weird vibes.
2. The Infamous by Mobb Deep - dark, gritty, and raw. If you like the serious tone on some Lyrical Prophets tracks, this hits hard.
3. A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory - jazzy beats, chill raps, easy to vibe to. Feels like a cousin to that Flipyawig re-release energy.
4. Dilated Peoples - The Platform - underground feel, strong lyrics, reminds me of Lyrical Prophets’ style.
5. CunninLynguists - A Piece of Strange - moody, layered, with a mix of introspection and skill. You’ll catch the same thoughtful wave.
6. J Dilla - Donuts - short loops, soulful cuts, perfect if you dig the production quirks on Flipyawig.
7. Atmosphere - God Loves Ugly - emotional, raw, and real. Not the same sound, but same heart.
8. Black Star - self-titled - Mos Def and Talib Kweli spittin' truth. Feels like a late-night version of what Lyrical Prophets do.
9. Hieroglyphics - 3rd Eye Vision - West Coast underground unity. The crew energy is strong, like Lyrical Prophets' posse setup.
10. Aesop Rock - Labor Days - dense rhymes, vivid stories. If you like digging into lyrics, this one’s a treasure. Funny how some of these albums never blew up big time, but they still hit harder than half the stuff on the radio.

Can’t complain about being compared to Dilated Peoples, even if the site itself is a total sham.

Rather than hosting any actual music on the Bandcamp page, it points to the oh-so-legit sounding ivault.quest domain to download or stream the album (even though the page is clean according to Virustotal, no chance I’m linking to it):

Gee, I wonder if downloading will result in malware or not

ivault looks to be tied to crypto nonsense and Bandcamp is littered with fake albums pointing to it. Still, I’m wondering how my album in particular got targeted, given that it’s really not mentioned anywhere online these days.¹ Like, literally: there are zero Google results for it. And in case you want another example of how shit AI is for search results, Bing’s Copilot basically regurgitates solely this fake Bandcamp page as if it were fact with mind-numbingly stupid sentences like “Released January 1, 2025, this is the 2003 re‑release of the original 1997 Flipyawig."

Oh, AI, how you're enriching our world

As stupid as this all is, I do kind of wish someone really had found a copy of my silly little demo from 30 years ago in a Berlin record shop and then decided to bootleg it.

Maybe this is a job for Hyperfixed? ↩︎

Junited (updated throughout June)

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 14:04:06 -0400

Following Robert Birming’s lead, for the month of June I’ll be maintaining a list of posts that I’ve enjoyed. I’m shooting to have a list of 30 by the end of the month, but they may not match one-to-one for the day that I find them. I’m also going to try and share a variety of writers and topics. They may be new, or a bit older. The idea here is just to share the indieweb/personal web and all the variety it still has.

This post will be updated throughout the month of June 2026. Last updated: June 8, 2026.

(Thanks to Eula for tagging one of my posts, which nudged me to create my own.)

A Trip to 90s Kansai: Exploring the XD FirstClass Network BBS (CD-ROM Journal) - A fascinating trip through a functional mid-90s BBS that was archived on a CD-ROM.
Imagining human-oriented online posts (Tracy Durnell’s Mind Garden) - Fun thought experiment about what humans might do to differentiate themselves from LLM-generated content. Each one I read, I thought, “Oooh… that’s good.”
The Archivist (TWOGOODEARS) - Super nerdy audiophile post about a bonkers looking new turntable. I didn’t understand half of the post, but still the type of thing that’s best about blogs: obsession and detail delivered with love.
The email, social media, and IndieWeb Node I need (that will probably never exist), that I think authors would love (The Fantastic Site of Lord Matt) - Detailed and well thought-out piece about a mash-up product he’d love to see made. Thought experiments like this are another thing blogs are great for.
Volume is not depth (unstory) - Bold Slovakian blog (in English) that says only what needs to be said and nothing more.
The Archivist In Me Turned This Blog Into a Book (Brain Baking) - I need to start tagging posts like this with “ems” for “extremely my shit.”
The Weird Way I Found Out About the Insidious San Francisco ‘Civic Joy’ Fund (Quailblog) - Finding a 12-year-old picture of yourself on a post is certainly one way of finding out about news I hadn’t considered.
Fuck|Thank you (Paweł Grzybek) - I sense a new IndieWeb trend in the making with this “thank you” list.

Productive weekend

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 16:43:14 -0400

I’m at the stage of life that I definitely don’t shoot for “productive” weekends as much as I do “relaxing” ones with lots of downtime. But, every so often, a productive weekend isn’t so bad and helps get the following week off to a good start. This weekend was one of them.

I started Saturday by heading back to my alma mater for a reunion brunch with former college newspaper staff. It was a nice, chill gathering that let me catch up with some old friends I hadn’t seen in a while as well as meet some new folks that I just missed overlapping with at the paper. One was a former editor-in-chief that we discovered works indirectly with my wife.

The event was a reunion, sure, but also a ruse to get former newspaper advisor and journalism professor Steve Watkins there to present to him a fantastic surprise: a new scholarship in his name, funded by former newspaper staff and students. I have fond memories of the one credit Practicum in Journalism class I took every semester when I was writing for the paper. We’d take time each week and he’d critique the previous week’s articles. When he got to mine, Steve would inevitably say, “Big surprise, Ryan wrote another hip-hop review and I don’t know what to say about it, so good job I guess?” I wrote feature articles in addition to entertainment pieces, of course, and always appreciated his feedback on my more substantive pieces. He stood behind his students and would go to bat for them against the administrative, defending their first amendment rights.

Steve’s written 15 (!!) books. I already have his latest (co-authored with his wife Janet) on my TBR pile and picked up a copy of The Black O: Racism and Redemption in an American Corporate Empire, a book he released to great acclaim when I was still in school in 1997. It’s about “the largest racial job discrimination class action lawsuit of its time” and is one I’ve meant to read since it came out (oops, sorry, Steve). Check Steve out (Substack link).

On Sunday I managed to get a lot of things checked off the to-do list, including burying a squirrel that had been in our neighbor’s yard, fixing the washing machine I mentioned in the most recent Weeknote (the $8 part did indeed fix it, but I needed to spend another $25 for because the dry/wet vac didn’t come with a wet filter), editing a podcast episode, and running to close out the month.

Monday ended up going a little bit awry (and why this post about the weekend is coming on a Tuesday) as I helped my wife deal with a lost phone and also cleaned up after our washing machine overflowed onto the floor. I’m glad I a.) had that wet vac on hand and b.) recently installed some water leak detectors right by the washing machine. It could have been bad. This leak, of course, meant I had a little more work to do on the washing machine. I had fixed the initial issue on Sunday, but when closing the thing back up, I pinched the tube that led to the pressure switch, meaning the water just… didn’t stop (until I unplugged the washer). Thankfully, it was an easy fix after the clean-up was done.

Today’s been a bit lighter and slower. And I’m not complaining.

Occasional Weeknote #29

Fri, 29 May 2026 15:39:12 -0400

Cross your fingers for me this weekend as I attempt a supposedly “easy” fix of the lid switch on our 26-year-old washing machine. I tried one super-simple tip involving zip ties that, sadly, did not fix our problem, but fully replacing the switch should hopefully fix it for a total cost of $8 (if you don’t count the $100 I spent on an overdue purchase of a wet/dry vac).

And on the topic of replacement parts, if you had a Whirlpool refrigerator with a pull-out drawer and you were looking into replacing a broken drawer top (just the top), how much do you think it would cost to replace? Probably like $15 or $20 tops, right?

$150. Lol. No.

Weatherwise, we’ve had a couple of beautiful days in a row here after over a week of rain.

Random fact I learned: spotted lanternflies reproduce at seven times the “normal” rate in the invasive Tree of Heaven (which we have three of in our backyard).

Hope y’all are well.

Old-timey radio interface for streaming radio
Japan’s Tourism Troubles Are Being Fuelled By Social Media Assholes (Aftermath)
Scrolls - An enjoyable weekly-ish newsletter about the IndieWeb by Mike Sass.
Dharma Voices for Animals - “Uniting Buddhist Principles with a Better World for Animals.”
last.fm is Now Independent - I’m breathing a little easier about the future of the site now that they’ve decoupled from CBS, which has gotten progressively shittier over the last year or so. I decided to subscribe to Pro for a bit to throw a little financial support their way.
record.club - Paul tipped me off to this Letterboxd-for-music service. Trying to decide still how deeply I’m going to get into this, but if I can work it into my Album Log workflow, I may stick with it.

Media Notes

Reading

Started and finished On the Calculation of Volume (Book IV) by Solvej Balle (trans. Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell). Book V in November!
Started and finished Transcription by Ben Lerner.
Started Leavings by Wendell Berry.

Music

I revisited a couple of remix albums I had in my collection but hadn’t touched in a decade plus. First up was the Gummy Soul remix of Souls of Mischief’s ‘93 Til Infinity album titled ‘93 Still. Remixing a classic album like this, one of hip-hop’s best ever, is a risky move. But these remixes pull samples from familiar sources of the era, resulting in a really dope, jazzy album with remixes that are true reimagining rather than just random beats behind accapellas.

The second was The Secret History of Underground Rap by Anticon’s Sole. It’s about 20 years old, but wow, what a listen. The remixes are dark and soooo far from the original tone of so many of these tracks, but that’s totally OK here. Remixes of Saafir’s “Light Sleeper,” Organized Konfusion’s “Bring it On,” and OC’s “Time’s Up” give you an idea of the vibes you’ll catch here.

I went record shopping with my daughter last weekend. We hit up an antique/thrift mall that has a really good lesser-known record dealer there who prices his stuff pretty sanely. I grabbed a 2010 repress of an Ornette Coleman record and a white label test pressing of Charles Lloyd’s Moon Man, a pretty oddball little record from 1970. It came with all the promotional material it was originally mailed with.

Also enjoyed over the last few weeks:

DJ Chief-One: 1991 Mixtape - A four-hour mix of hip-hop from 1991. Masterfully done and good for those who like when the DJ lets the tracks play through rather than cutting after just a verse for each song.
Sonny Rollins: A Night At The Village Vanguard (The Complete Masters) - RIP to the master. Hadn’t listened to this date in a long time, but it’s a really good one.
Błoto + Ion D: “Mobbing (feat. DJ Eprom)" - Błoto AND DJ Eprom? In this economy?

Movies

Come See Me in the Good Light - Keep a box of tissues nearby for this documentary about poet Andrea Gibson’s final months with cancer.

Site Notes

Scanned and posted a 1988 Epyx product catalog with all those great games from childhood.
Added a bunch of capsule reviews going back to 1997 to the kinda massive album log page on my site - over 1600 reviews and still going. It’s funny to see my opinions on music going back to when I was 21.
New post: That time I interviewed a civil rights leader and anti-rap activist (refers also to the newly archived interview audio and transcript).
New Post: All at once
Fixed up my books page.

All at once

Tue, 26 May 2026 13:54:04 -0400

This week I read Ben Lerner’s new book Transcription, a fictional dive into the early days of the pandemic, technology, and the effect of both on memory and experience. One particular sentence (actually, just a part of a sentence) late in the book really hit for me:

"I felt eight and eighteen and forty-five all at once..."

It evokes that feeling that you are well beyond your youth, but so much of that “you” from early adulthood filled with bold confidence is still within reach, at some level, inside of you. And at the same time, you’re still feeling remnants of the unsure child who feels like he should know more than he does, who feels like he’s the only one that doesn’t have things figured out (except now he knows that being an adult doesn’t necessarily help you figure things out).

If that, there, doesn’t sum up what life as an adult feels like, I’m not sure what does. I wonder if that feeling persists later in life. When you’re 70 or 80, does your 50 year-old self linger in the background? Does the 18-year-old self finally start to disappear?

That time I interviewed a civil rights leader and anti-rap activist

Fri, 22 May 2026 15:01:32 -0400

I was 20 years old–a college sophomore–and civil rights leader/anti-gangster rap activist C. Delores Tucker was coming to speak at my school. I wrote a piece for the school paper about her forthcoming visit:

*Mary Washington College Bullet*, Fredericksburg, VA; February 15, 1996, page 5.

Article transcript

Dr. C. DeLores Tucker, Chair of the National Political Congress of Black Women and Chair of the Democratic National Black Caucus, will be speaking at Mary Washington College on Feb. 27 at 7 p.m. in the Red Room of the Campus Center about the “ramifications of gangsta rap.”

Tucker participated with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965 and is a member of the N.A.A.C.P. Board of Trustees. She is also the founding President of the Martin Luther King Association for Non-Violent Change and was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve on the National Women’s Advisory Committee. Tucker is also President of the Philadelphia Tribune, the oldest Black newspaper in the United States. She has received over 300 awards and was the first Black woman in the nation to serve as Secretary of State.

In recent months, Tucker was on speaking tours in Europe and the Middle East. She gave a “history-making keynote address” at the Topen Museum in Amsterdam, Holland, for the opening exhibit of “White Over Black,” drawing the largest crowd in the museum’s history.

Tucker will be speaking on how rap labels “are pimping pornography to the children for the almighty dollar.” 1993 marked the beginning of her campaign against rap music when, in defense of her stance, she was carted away in handcuffs to jail for protesting outside a record store. “I’d die before I’d let that music continue to be.”

Toting poster-sized blowups of rap lyrics and album covers, Tucker has made her way into conferences and congressional hearings, urging people such as Time-Warner executives Gerald Levin and Michael Fuchs to read lyrics they had published under Interscope Records, the label that sports Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg on their roster.

While rap may seem to be the controversy, Tucker has caused enough of her own. Much of the rap industry has opposed Tucker and her advocates’ stances. “Millions of people in America today are without jobs, millions more without health care, Social Security is disappearing, the public school system is in steep decline, the murder rate is soaring, armed white men are waging war on the federal government — and they believe gangsta rap is Public Enemy No. 1?” wrote an angry Michael Franti of rap group Spearhead recently in an article for the Internet.

Tucker has been supported by Presidential hopeful Bob Dole and former GOP Education Secretary William J. Bennett. “She has tremendous moral authority,” said Bennett in a recent TV interview with Tucker.

“Wherever gangsta rap is, we’re going to take whatever action is necessary to stop it,” said Tucker. “Our children have suffered too much.”

Here I was, a young writer and obsessive (white) hip-hop fan, about to interview the woman who had marched alongside Dr. King at Selma, founded and chaired the National Congress of Black Women, and led the effort in Pennsylvania to be one of the first states to pass the ERA. Also, “[a]s Chief of Elections of Pennsylvania, she was a leader in instituting a voter registration by mail and reducing the voting age from 21 to 18 years of age."¹ But she was also the woman leading a campaign against “gangster porno rap,” which I took great offense to. So what did I do in the six minutes I had to chat with her?

I went right in, not wasting any time.

“A lot of the hip-hop community has taken offense to what they consider to be generalizations that you’ve made, and by looking at the actions of only a few artists, do you feel you’re dwelling too much on the negative side rather than when the overall music is generally positive?"

I mean… OOF. Lead up to it slowly, man. Learn your trade.

Earlier today I posted the audio and transcript of my interview from three decades ago.² Whether I was the proper person to be doing this interview is certainly a valid question, but in the final piece (which I haven’t been able to find) I tried to give voice to people who deserved to be heard on the issue.

Looking back 30 years later at that extraordinary opportunity, my view has matured. I mean, I still feel that her approach of attacking rappers rather than directing most of her ire at the primarily white record label execs was misguided. And I question whether she really had demo tapes by “positive artists” being submitted en masse to her because a.) who would send hip-hop demos to C. Delores Tucker? and b.) I don’t recall her ever promoting specific artists or music she considered “positive” during the course of her crusade.

But… being older and having a little more insight, I realize there was more nuance to it than either her “gangster rap music go” or Tupac’s response of “C. Delores Tucker, you’s a motherfucker/ Instead of tryin’ to help [me], you destroy a brother.”

Sytonia Reid wrote an interesting piece in 2023 titled “Revisiting C. Delores Tucker’s War on Rap: Too Much Smoke, Not Enough Flowers” (warning: Substack) where she noted:

Today, that campaign still seems to be what Tucker is best known for. As I’ve come to learn more about Tucker’s life at least one thing is clear to me: although some of her actions were fairly questioned and critiqued, her overall contributions to Black freedom and consciousness movements deserve just as much space in our collective memory as her controversies.

…

The progressive value of Black women leading a divestment campaign from an industry that degrades Black women and men alike, and devalues Black consumers and artists alike, is perhaps clearer today than it was back then.

And that’s precisely what I can see more clearly now. Tucker was coming from a place of love. She wanted to combat stereotypes rather than perpetuate them while encouraging “political empowerment for our people.” This was a woman who brought more women into government and fought successfully for women’s rights and voting rights throughout her career. Even if I disagree with her methods and the people she associated with in her later years (like William Bennett and his conservative Parents Television Council³), I can at least appreciate she was a complex figure struggling to figure out how to advance her causes in a world that became increasingly hostile towards her.

(Interesting side note: After Tucker’s death in 2005, NPR used an uncredited clip of my interview (17 seconds in) in this brief piece they did about her life.)

Wikipedia contributors, “C. Delores Tucker,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, (accessed May 22, 2026). ↩︎
Yeah, I cringe listening back to my interview now, sounding overconfident-yet-nervous. I went into it with the goal of challenging her, but I feel like let her present her side and defend her position, so it wasn’t a total embarrassment on my side. ↩︎
Who filed for bankruptcy last year ↩︎

Occasional Weeknote #28

Fri, 08 May 2026 13:04:00 -0400

My company’s new health plan covers an online personal trainer, so for the first time, I’m giving it a shot. For all the running I’ve done over the last bunch of years, I’ve neglected any strength training and done only very little flexibility or balance work. I’m at that age where I need to break that streak and prep this bag of bones for the next stages of life.

In other news, I’ve been enjoying two limited edition Waterloo flavors currently available: Root Beer and Apple Pie a la Mode. Even my kid’s been enjoying the root beer one. It really delivers the flavor and vibe of root beer without the 40 grams of sugar.

These next few days have me in full parent mode, working the concessions at an 8th grade dance tonight and moving my daughter out of her dorm early next week. Time marches on.

H got me a fun fidget toy recently that’s shaped like a cup (bowl) of matcha. Picture at the end.

Happy Mother’s Day to all moms!

showing up for my illnesses is hard (Ava) - “Being chronically ill and having a doctor’s appointment feels like you keep being a victim reporting similar crimes over and over again to the police, and you have no influence over whether you’re believed and whether they’ll catch the perp.” An interesting way to think about chronic illness that gives me a deeper understanding of what people might be going through.
Do I belong in tech anymore? (Ky) - “AI use is only one part of broader social trends within tech that leave me questioning whether I should remain here.”
Slower Than Slow: 16 RPM Records - I remember the 16 rpm setting on the turntable I had growing up but never actually seeing an 16 2/3 rpm record in the wild. Turns out, there’s an interesting history behind them involving radio stations, audiobooks (especially the bible) for the blind, car-based record players, and South African music.
Friendster is coming back - To friend someone, you must physically tap phones. After a year without contact, the relationship “softens” and you’re encouraged to reconnect in person.

Media Notes

Podcasts

The Importance of Joy (Undefended Dharma with Mary Stancavage) - The first half of this, in particular, really hit for me, outlining the idea that joy is not the same as pleasure or avoidance. Many people feel that they need to be in a constant state of worry, anger, or concern about the way things are so its evident that they care, but joy can absolutely exist right alongside these things in an equanimous way.
We Watched all of Bea Arthur’s Shoppers Drug Mart Commercials! (Out on the Lanai) - A fun episode of the original Golden Girls podcast digging into Bea’s hilarious commercials for the Canadian drug store chain during her run on GG.

Music

Sister Rosetta Tharpe- “Didn’t It Rain?” Live 1964 - The mighty Sister Rosette Tharpe rocks the shit out of this song. Love the set, too.
Nostalgia 77: When the Lights Gone - Nostalgia 77’s The Sleepwalking Society is one of my favorite albums and this latest is super enjoyable, too. Very relaxed vibes and it’s so nice to hear Lamdin teaming up with Yosa Peit again.
Karolina Cicha & Bart Pałyga: Płyta Tatarska - I dipped into some modern eastern European folk this week, and this was one album that I really dug. Cicha makes music with an ear towards Polish minority groups while Pałyga adds throat-singing (both Kargyraa and Sygyt-style). Some really fun stuff here.
Also on the eastern European tip, Atalyja is a Lithuanian folk-rock band. A good starting point is “Sakalas,” which immediately makes me think of Alice Coltrane’s “Journey in Satchidananda.” (You hear it, too, right?)
Puuluup live on KEXP - In another great KEXP performance, this Estonian duo describes their music as “original creations impregnated with tradition, references to punk classics and romantic neo-zombie post-folk with educational content.” Their deadpan humor between songs is also very endearing.

Movies

After many, many months I finally finished Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). It took me so long, I felt like I couldn’t even accurately rate it, so I didn’t.

Some good videos

Rasta Driver (SNL) - The whole “white guy as Rasta” territory has been well-tread comedy material for decades, but I do want to give Andrew Dismukes props for his spot-on take on early-90s dancehall reggae. His intonation and the way he hits the emphasis on the right words is spot-on.
Do You Like Me? (Sesame Street) - Bert & Ernie bringing the feel-goods from back in the day.
Documentary: Rocking the Horse - The Unmade Podcast - I’ve been a fan of The Unmade Podcast since the very beginning and love this culmination of years of inside jokes and weird suburban Australian references.

Site Notes

At the bottom of the home page, you will now see what I’m listening to at this very moment (and it will refresh automatically). If I’m not listening to anything, you won’t see anything and it won’t refresh.
New post: The nightmare of changing your internet bundle

It makes this delightful clicking noise when you "stir" and the whisk looks like it's actually whisking. Pro tip: don't use when unmuted on a Zoom call.

The nightmare of changing your internet bundle

Thu, 07 May 2026 10:37:00 -0400

Our internet bill was too high. It had gone beyond the promotional contract period and the triple-play bundle for 300/300 net, medium-level TV package, and home phone (yes, a landline!) was just too much considering that we almost never watched live TV/DVR anymore. My goal was simple:

Increase our net to gigabit,
keep the home phone,
completely ditch cable.

After struggling with their terrible web site upgrade options, I reached out via chat to our provider of 25+ years, Verizon Fios, and laid out what I wanted for the rep:

Hi - I’m starting a chat about my account because the web experience is SO BAD in terms of trying to find the package/offer I want to go with and getting the actual, real price nailed down.

Right now we’re on an expired package deal of 300/300 internet + preferred TV with DVR + home phone (landline). Our prices went up a lot after the initial commitment period, so I want to see what we can do. We’ve been with Verizon for over 25 years, so I’m hoping we can find a good deal.

We really do not need the TV/DVR package at all at this point. The only reason we had it was because it was cheaper to get a three-item bundle deal. Ideally, I’d like:

* 1 gig internet upgrade
* no TV
* keep the home phone (no voicemail, etc., needed)

What can you offer?

And thus began the epic battle.

“Sonia” came back with what looked to be a pretty decent offer. It was much lower than what we were paying, took out the TV service, and upgraded our Internet. I could very easily have just said, “Looks good!” and moved ahead. But I looked closer at the wall of text she had cut and pasted in the chat window. I saw this:

Verizon Home Device Protect
NEW
$25.00
Additional discounts
$25 Internet Loyalty Discount thru May 6, 2027
NEW
-$25.00

My first thought was, “Wait… WTF is Verizon Home Protect.” The answer to that it gives you “24/7 support, in-home visits and protects your eligible electronics in your home. With Verizon Home Device Protect you get all of this support, protection and security. In addition, you will receive free repair or replacement service up to $5,000 per year, with a maximum of $2,000 per claim. This coverage extends to both your current residence and an additional residence.”

In other words, nonsense I didn’t want.

But the $25 discount right after that made it almost look like I would be getting it for free for a year. Still, though, I pushed.

“What would the price be without the Verizon Home Device Protect because I don’t need that.”

Sonia replied, “Since we have created a recommended deal for you which is as per usage details so I would recommend you to give a try to Verizon home device protect since it is a highly recommended deal with super amazing benefits and I am sure you will love it.”

I pushed. “But what is the price of the same plan without the Verizon Home Device Protect?”

She replied, “[This] is the best price for the plan I have shared with best recommended deal and bundle discounts. So I would recommend you to try the deal. […] Are we good to proceed with the order?”

I pushed again. “I really don’t need it, though. I’d like to see for comparison what the price is.”

She replied, “Since the above recommended deal is suggested as per your usage details and this is really at a better price for you. So I would just suggest you to give it a try !”

I began to think Verizon was going to send someone to my door to rough me up if I didn’t “give it a try.”

I stood my ground. “I don’t need it and don’t particularly want to get locked into $25/month I didn’t want to spend. Can you please provide the price without this item?”

Finally, she replied with what I think was a bit of dejectedness, “let me customize the deal for you and check for better price.”

A few minutes later, she came back with another wall of text. No more Home Protect and the loyalty discount was still in place, but since it was still a lot of text, I formatted it to be more readable. And I spotted this:

Unlimited Individual Cloud Storage
NEW
$10.00

I wrote, “Thank you… but I do see what you snuck in there! Can I get the price without the cloud storage?”

She replied:

That is a recommended deal I have shared with you

With Unlimited Cloud Storage, you’ll have all the space you need to easily back up your photos, videos and documents and access securely from your smartphone, tablet or .computer.

This is a recommended option , if you wish I can opt this for you as well

She then offered me a bunch of “perks” like Netflix/HBO Max bundles, etc. I declined those and asked for a final quote without the cloud storage.

“Sure ! I will help you with the deal as per your requirement”

Finally, finally, finally I was provided a quote with no “perks” I didn’t ask for and just what I needed. The loyalty discount only applies for a year, but in 12 months I’ll be having another chat to see if it can be extended.

“Are we good to proceed with the order ?”

Yes, Sonia. Yes, we are.

Occasional Weeknote #27

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:38:00 -0400

I once again have a functioning 8-track player, so now I can play my grandfather’s old Sons of the Pioneers¹ cartridges as well as knock off Monkees and Beatles groups doing covers. Yay!

It involved opening up my Lear Jet H-300, poking around a bit, and finally determining it was just a belt that needed replacing. I hadn’t played anything on it since 15 years ago, so it’s not a surprise it needed replacing. Thankfully, the always awesome Turntable Needles was there for me and hooked me up with a new one. I had to measure the belt path with a string and then use calipers to measure the width and height of the belt in order to find the right one.

Now that it’s working, I’m tempted to record some of my own songs to a blank 8-track and to fix up some of the tapes I’ve got where parts have started to degrade. It’s all totally pointless, but enjoyable.

Ways of Moving (Mandy Brown) - “The difficulty isn’t in naming something we would like to spend our time or energy on. It’s in finding the match between how we would like to be and what capitalism will permit us to do while still keeping a roof over our head, and food in our bellies.”
Our Longing for Inconvenience (Hanif Abdurraqib)
Discovering Prince, Ten Years Later (Anil Dash, of course)
Your blog is a radio station (Jim Grey) - “Every time you publish a post, you are programming your station. You are choosing what goes into rotation.”

Media Notes

Reading

Finished Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir by Craig Mod
Started All Blood Runs Red: The Legendary Life of Eugene Bullard―Boxer, Pilot, Soldier, Spy by Tom Clavin

Podcasts

How the Internet Became Hell (with Whitney Phillips) (404 Media) - What a great conversation about how we got to this point, including some angles I hadn’t considered before.

Music

The Bill Evans Trio’s Sunday At The Village Vanguard is a truly beautiful album. No wonder it’s considered a classic.

Movies

The Burden (2017) - Dope animation and I definitely felt the message.
D’Wild Wild Weng (1982) - Do yourself a favor and just watch just the first two minutes.

Site Notes

New posts: Replanting and Used Computer Locator - April 1990
New page: Random 10 - A ten-track playlist randomly chosen on each page load from my 10,000+ favorite songs.
New review: Courageous Chief’s Warpath from 1991.
New list: “Jazz Formations, Ranked.”
I’ve added a handful of new seltzers recently.

They’re like the Menudo of country music. ↩︎

Used Computer Locator - April 1990

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:49:00 -0400

It’s been a while since I’ve posted an #ArchiveTheUnimportant item. Today’s is a 28-page paper newsletter from April 1990 that I found in the basement.

Used Computer Locator billed itself as “The National Guide to Used Computers and Surplus Electronics.” One of dozens (or hundreds), I’m sure. The content was primarily want ads and larger ads, but also had some articles reprinted from other newsletters, like “What Are You Giving Away?,” a pretty technical piece on how to truly wipe your drives before selling or donating them. Judging from this post from January 1990 by the future Editor-in-Chief Ken Wilkinson, this is one of the first issues.

There’s some good computer hardware history here, of course, but there’s some fun to be had, too, in the “Personals” section:

These couldn't have been real, right?

Additionally, this ad for “The Video Resume” caught my eye:

Would the call be free? Or would you get hit with a giant fee? No one knows!

First of all, a 1-600 number? Looks like 600 is currently used in Canada for “specialized telecommunication services,” but this only goes back to 1993. I couldn’t find any other information about 1-600 numbers and if they were toll free like 800 or pay like 900 and 976 numbers.

Secondly - a video resume, huh? Unfortunately, there’s not enough in the ad to find much information about the company thanks to the generic name. I bet the samples were as cringey as some of the old video dating VHSes that pop up on YouTube from time to time.

Replanting

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:20:46 -0400

Richard MacManus wrote a piece last year titled “Replanting Articles: Bring Legacy Posts to Your Website” and it resonated with me before I even got to the text. It’s exactly what I’ve been doing since relaunching my site last year. In addition to writing new posts, I’ve been digging through old favorites that used to be on the site and bringing them back, dated with their original post dates. I clean up links (removing some, pointing some to updated locations, and using Wayback Machine links in some places), possibly touch up crappy writing or spelling errors, and then add a bit of context at the top of the post.

MacManus writes:

I’m calling this activity “replanting” — because it feels like moving a neglected plant, perhaps crowded by weeds and eaten by bugs, into a new garden, where it will be cared for and nurtured again.

He takes a slightly different approach, offering a screenshot of how the post originally looked, wherever it was published, but otherwise his approach mirrors my own. MacManus' original Read/Write/Web posts are getting a new life on his site after the originals either became neglected or lost to time and now my old interviews, music year-in-review posts, writings on tea, and other assorted silliness can live on.

It may not be the full archive of everything I’ve ever written–something I would have aspired to have here when I was younger–but it’s serving as a good representation of what I think is worth keeping around for the long haul.

Occasional Weeknote #26

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:04:33 -0400

Sometimes catching someone else up on your life (or writing such a blog post) is like those weekly status calls at work where it feels like you’re justifying your continued employment to your co-workers. Kinda weird, right?

Instead of giving a summary of what I’ve been up to, I’m going to share a couple sentences from Craig Mod’s Things Become Other Things that I liked:

When I was nineteen, moving to Japan may have felt temporary, was a somewhat arbitrary choice, but over time it has become an emigration, not an expatriation. Today, I feel nothing like an “expat,” that word of extreme privilege applied to Westerners moving east, a word charged with connotations of asymmetric power, of non-permanence, of elevation above and immunity from local laws and customs, of your “home” being better, a place to which you’d obviously return. (p.56)

When Not to Break Rules (annie) - “I am against the pattern we seem to have developed as an intelligent but oh so emotional people of feeling bad as a way of bearing responsibility."
The Big Problem with Lovable That No One Is Talking About (Pootlepress) - You don’t know have to know much about what Lovable is (it’s a vibe coding thing). “You don’t know if it will still be there in five years.” This is a problem we’ve been seeing forever, and it’s even more the case now that everyone can throw an app together. Whenever I’m trying a new platform (or app), I automatically assume it won’t be there in a year or that there will be some massive security breach. Then I decide if I really want to use it based on those assumptions.
The Old Internet is Still Here (Tyler Gaw) - “We’re still making stuff we care about and sharing that stuff on our websites. We’re making it for ourselves first, but we’re also making it for you.” (via ResearchBuzz)
Endgame for the Open Web (Anil Dash) - “The most egregious harm is the way that the generosity and grace of the people who keep the web open is being abused and exploited [by AI companies]. Those people who maintain open source software? They’re hardly getting rich — that’s thankless, costly work, which they often choose instead of cashing in at some startup.”

Media Notes

Reading

Finished reading The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen. 450+ pages going way back in history, looking at the many uses of notebooks and how they evolved through the years. I honestly didn’t think that much could be said. Interesting read, but it did take me a good six months to get through.
Started and finished A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics by Donald Richie. Nice, short book on wabi, sabi, and a plenty of other design aesthetics I was aware of but didn’t really know. Richie’s knowledgeable on all things Japan, though I still really question the choice of cover art for his book on Japanese cinema.
Started Craig Mod’s Things Become Other Things: A Walking Memoir.

Podcasts

Not a specific episode, but I’ve started listening to The Empty Bowl cereal review podcast recently. It’s a calm, quiet podcast about cereal, so… yeah. It’s a good one to snooze to.

Music

Amerigo Gazaway: Bonus Beats, Vol. 1 - A straight-ahead head-nodder from top to bottom.
DJ Ragz: Puzzle Dust - My pal DJ Ragz’s new project is a fun scratch record over beats by producers he respects. Ragz did all the mixing and engineering as well as cover design. Not on streaming, except for Bandcamp and it’s available on limited edition cassette.
Groove Professor: głowa do głośnika - Absolutely loved this beat record from Polish producer Groove Professor. Give me more.
Flea: Honora - The RHCP bassist delivers a thoroughly interesting and enjoyable jazz record. He’s good on trumpet, too!
Aaron Shaw: And So It Is - Really engaging and personal new jazz album recorded as Shaw learned of a difficult health diagnosis that affects his ability to play.

Movies

Videoheaven is a nearly three hour cultural critique and history of the video store as told through appearances in movies and TV clips of the era.

Some good videos

SNL: Twinings Extreme - This old cut-for-time SNL sketch was a good one.
Tiny Little Lip Balm - BDG back on fire.

Site Notes

New post: On the guilt of quiet days - “I’ve heard so much about how people in their 40s or 50s learn, finally, to stop GAF about what other people think. But maybe we need to apply that to ourselves a little bit, too. … Should we stop giving a fuck about what we think of us, too?”
New page: Album Log - I’m getting back in the habit of jotting down a few notes about an album as I listen. Figured I’d share it as I go. And just because, I imported 1500+ capsule reviews I wrote on ADDreviews between 2001-2009.
Updated my 100 Favorites list on Album Whale since a few more of them are now available on streaming. Only eight are not.
Added a running page, inspired by Yordi’s.
Updated the “audio gear” section of my uses page.

On the guilt of quiet days

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 14:24:49 -0400

Quiet days are a must.

Days where you don’t foist the “need-to-dos” on yourself. Days where moments of sitting outside and listening to the birds or feeling the wind blow make up the majority of the day.

When reading a book or listening to music or writing a blog post or rearranging a room or taking a nap or just… thinking is what defines your time as “productive” or “useful.”

These days can be hard to come by. Giving yourself permission to allow things to be simple for a day is challenging, especially when there’s so much that “needs” doing. It feels weird to consider trying to schedule these days like appointments in your calendar.

Maybe the fact it feels weird to schedule or that “relaxation” puts a pit in your stomach can be an inflection point. There are always going to be things that are largely out of our control, but what if we took ownership of that small amount of worry, that nagging need to be productive, that guilt that comes with relaxing?

I’ve heard so much about how people in their 40s or 50s learn, finally, to stop GAF about what other people think. But maybe we need to apply that to ourselves a little bit, too. Is that judgement we make of ourselves really real? Can we stop being performative to ourselves like we often are for others? Should we stop giving a fuck about what we think of us, too?

(Thank you for reading as I try to remind myself it’s OK to take this Sunday to not do anything of great import amidst a laundry list of things hanging over my head, some of which I’ve delayed attending to for too long already.)

Occasional Weeknote #25

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 14:01:49 -0400

The 25th weeknote is a bit short and uneventful. No real reason other than I’m just in a bit of a creative funk for the moment and wading through some general Life Overwhelm (which I feel like needs to be a Slack status or something).

How about we just get into a few links and things?

The State of Black Bookstore report
‘human oversight’ is a meaningless buzzword - ava: “If anything, the human intervention here is for the companies - making sure that the AI didn’t accidentally rank someone top that is completely unfitting for the task. It’s not there for you. No one will notice if your perfectly fitting application has been disregarded by AI for no discernible reason, and no one will find it as part of the oversight process in the hundreds of other applications to make sure.”
25 Years of iPod Brain
Mutual Aid Means We Will Save Us - Fantastic issue from W. Kamau Bell. (Substack, tho'.)
The Last Quiet Thing - Owning something now means we’ve become its IT department required for ongoing maintenance.
Your Dog Still Exists - *sniff*

Media Notes

Music

Ishamel Ali: “Every Circle a Moon” - Funky free jazz.
Paul Nice & Phill Most Chill, Fabreeze Brothers featuring Oxygen: “Golden Crown” - Solid throwback rap about crate digging.

Site Notes

The only thing I’ve done recently is move a bunch of pages that were filling up my footer to a specific /slashpages page.

Occasional Weeknote #24

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:38:10 -0400

A few things I’ve learned in the last few weeks:

Good stress is still stress.
The way car insurance operates makes very little sense to the average person (me). Almost everything you’d think works one way, works another. (Also: if your insurance company offers towing coverage, it’s not a “nice add-on feature.” Each time you use it counts as an insurance claim and though it doesn’t directly affect your premium, it can affect how you’re viewed by the insurance company when they look at your claim record. The number of claims can matter more than the money they’ve put out on your behalf.)
In times of overwhelm and worry, doing any little thing that helps you feel some control helps. It can also help you lean into the constant not-knowing that’s required of being a living human.

Right now, I’m looking forward to some spring-like temperatures coming up next week and I’ve been enjoying piecing together my new mid-range audio system. Loving how it sounds and I’m enjoying the continuing shift of my listening habits.

Last thing: if you read a blog post by someone that you appreciate, take the time to drop them an email. It’s really nice to hear from readers, no matter how much we say we write for ourselves.

Lynn’s concerts - Super fun interface to all the concerts Lynn has seen in her life. Would love to do something like this, especially since it would be pretty easy from a data standpoint (I’ve got everything in a spreadsheet).
Ultimate Double Feature Weekend - The idea: ““Y’know when the characters in a movie go to see a movie and it feels really meta… Well, with an “Ultimate Double Feature,” we play the first movie up until the point when the characters enter a cinema to watch a different film… and then we play the film that they are going to watch… and then we go back to the first film and finish out that story.” I really like this. An example: Donnie Darko and Evil Dead.
Baseline Loss - Naz Hamid: “As mass layoffs and a destabilized tech industry lets thousands go because the belief is in compute rather than people, I ask too: what does my career look like in this stage?”
Cooklang - “a simple, human-readable text format for writing recipes that can be understood by both cooks and computers.”

Media Notes

Reading

Finished Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume (Book III). Loved it. Bring on book IV next month (I’m first in line at the public library!).

Podcasts

Silver Bullet Security Podcast 154: Gadi Evron - Silver Bullet ran from 2006-2018 (and I edited/engineered all 153 episodes!) and now after nearly eight years, it’s back with a focus on security in machine learning/AI. And I’m back at it behind the scenes!
Practicing the Pause (Undefended Dharma) - Pausing, the Brahmaviharas, equanimity, the Worldly Winds, all in a tight 25 minutes.

Music

Sarah Hanahan trades off with Joshua Redman
Drama B - Shaolin Style - Super fun video, great Wu-style production, and just a straight up solid cut.
De La Soul: Tiny Desk Concert - Linked up everywhere this week, with good reason.

Movies

Fun stupid movie: Death Promise.
Not fun stupid movie: The Nostril Picker.
The trailer to Billy Idol Should Be Dead is promising.

Some good videos

Kamala vs. George Steele: November 24, 1986 - 1980s WWF was really… something. I mean… really something.
Women reunite with baby they found in 1972 - The feel-good story of the week.
3 Days in Tokyo 🌳 Discovering retro neighborhoods: Jimbocho, Yanaka, Asakusa, Shimokitazawa - I’ve been watching this one in bits and pieces. It’s chill and calming and has also lead me to start watching a lot more videos on jazz kissa.
The 2026 Barkley Marathons looked even more intense than usual. No one finished.
Skillz “lost” Grammy Speech - When Skillz won the Grammy for Best Spoken Word Poetry album, he was on the red carpet and didn’t get to accept the award or give his speech. Here’s the speech he would have given.

Site Notes

Did a bunch of tweaking around the site, including some back-end changes on the Digital Garden page that allow me to show the five most recently updated items on the home page.
Speaking of the garden, added a new page titled “Radio Shows and Channels By Genre That Are Good.”
Three new posts, one about the first couple of albums I bought as a kid, another about my ideas about where we might go in a post-streaming world that would help compensate artists, and one more about my two months using Deezer.
Switched from Google Fonts to Bunny.net’s privacy-preserving fonts.

1995: Mad Skillz (the 2026 Grammy Winner for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album) and… me.

Deezer vs. Spotify (and Qobuz) (or, Yet another post about a dude trying to leave Spotify, part 2)

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

(Read part one here, where I discuss my month with Qobuz.)

I started with a free month of Qobuz and then used two months to try out Deezer.

Let’s run down the list of my observations of how Deezer stacks up against Spotify (with some Qobuz commentary tossed in):

Vs.

Deezer Advantages

Live radio - It’s pretty cool to see live radio integrated into a streaming app. Unfortunately, it doesn’t display song data. If it did that, this would be a huge plus for Deezer.
Artist page features - I dig how the artist page shows you how many tracks from the artist are in your “Favorites,” and you can then browse to them and play them.
EQ - The EQ–with some good presets, a bass boost, and even a surprisingly nice surround sound slider–is something I didn’t think I’d use, but it’s not bad!
Good queue management - Like Qobuz, it features “play next,” which seems so obvious but Spotify has never offered (they only have “add to queue” which puts it at the end). (Caveat: see fifth bullet point in “disadvantages”)
Flow, “track mix,” algorithmic stuff - Flow, in particular is pretty cool. You can select a mood or genre (which get pretty granular) and adjust whether you want more “discovery” or more “favorites.” If you’ve got a nice batch of favorite tracks and artists saved up, you’ll get a good mix going.
“Shaker” - Like Spotify’s feature that allows an auto-generated playlist based on multiple users' profiles, except Deezer allows friends across services to do this and also collaborate on a manual shared playlist. Pretty neat, though the quality of suggestions was hit-or-miss in my one test with a pal.
You can upload up to 2,000 of your own MP3s. - A nice feature, for sure, though the implementation is awkward. You can only access the files through a “My MP3 playlist” menu item and not by searching by artist or album name. So, if you’ve got a live album by a favorite artist, you won’t see that album show up on the artist’s page alongside the albums in Deezer’s own catalog. You can’t even go to a song on the album and then choose “View Album.” It’s like uploading a bunch of individual tracks to a single playlist, even if they’re all tagged properly with artist and album metadata.

Deezer Disadvantages

Artist disambiguation sucks here, too. - As with Qobuz, artists with the same name are often presented together. I can’t believe this is a problem that hasn’t been solved yet.
Playlists max out at 5000 tracks. - Better than Qobuz, half of Spotify. (Favorite tracks max out at 10,000, which is nice since it was able to transfer my entire Favorites playlist from Spotify without breaking it up.)
The built-in scrobbler seems to have occasional issues. - Reddit notes that folks have had some issues, so I just stuck with Panoscrobbler, which worked fine.
The mobile app is so-so. It lags more frequently than other music apps and while the UI is fine, I find myself thinking “now, where is ___?” a little too often.
The mobile app seems to forget how far into a song you are. - When I went back to the app after a couple of hours, it knew what song I had been listening to, but it brought me back to the beginning of the track instead of playing from where I left off. Very annoying and honestly kind of a dealbreaker for me (it’s nearly as annoying as Spotify just clearing out the queue when it feels like it).
Less detail on artists and albums than Qobuz (and about the same as Spotify). If you like digging into info about an artist or release, you’re going to have to go elsewhere.

It’s a Wash

Deezer, like Qobuz, is missing some tracks and transfer is imperfect. But it’s all close enough. Honestly, track selection is barely worth comparing across services outside of “how much AI crap do they allow on their platform”?
All three services are pretty similar in price for single, duo, and family plans.
Sound quality is good. But, again, I’m not the most discerning listener.

FAQ:

What’s next?

I’ve got a six month trial on Apple Music. Maybe I’ll give TIDAL another shot. And to drag this out unnecessarily, I’m sure I’ll end up doing some sort of final comparison post complete with a table filled with s, s, and plenty of s.

Are you still using Spotify?

Sigh. Yes. I mean, they’re no longer running ICE ads, but that’s only because the ad campaign ended so they don’t get to claim any moral high ground there. And there’s no change to the multitude of other issues. What I’m saying is that I’m still using Spotify with the guilt that goes along with it. But I’m using it less! (Which doesn’t matter since I’m still paying them the same amount.)

This piece talks about Jimmy Iovine’s proclamation that “The streaming services … are minutes away from being obsolete. … The streaming services have a bad situation, there’s no margins, they’re not making any money." And this got me to thinking a bit about what the post-streaming world might look like and what could rise from the ashes to help compensate artists with tips on top of standard purchases but also by helping to make up for previously pirated music and used CD purchases.

Service idea: roll-your-own streaming subscription (with artist royalties!)

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 17:17:03 -0400

Streaming sucks for artists because the major players pay squat per stream. And in Spotify’s case, artists who don’t get many streams may get literally nothing.

One alternative to traditional streaming services is to bring focus back to your own personal music collection. That could be simply playing music locally on your PC/phone/DAP. It could also be streaming your music from a self-hosted Plex/Subsonic server or a Navidrome/Gonic instance on Pikapods. This means you’re playing music you’ve purchased. But, let’s be honest: you’ve probably got a lot of stuff that you haven’t paid the artist for. Those obscure albums you grabbed from a music blog in 2007 are the obvious example, but even used CDs would fall under this category. The artists don’t receive any additional payment for used music sales, and a not insignificant number of those CDs were originally promotional items that were never paid for in the first place.

Here’s my idea for the fan that would like to:

get off of paid streaming services (or, if keeping a streaming service, increasing the payment the artist gets per-stream by “tipping” them extra)
make good on those music blog downloads or used CD purchases
toss a little extra money to artists whose music they’ve already purchased

I’m picturing a micropayment-ish service that acts as a transactional middle-man between fans and artists. Maybe this service is artist-owned or a non-profit, to make it extra appealing. It would maintain a Distrokid/Tunecore-like database of artists to allow fans to pay a monthly name-your-price subscription. The service would distribute that payment to artists based on each user’s own listening habits as captured on a centralized service like last.fm or libre.fm.

An example:

You decide to allocate $10 a month to this roll-your-own subscription service. Over the course of the first month, you listen to 1300 tracks from your own digital collection and via scrobbleable Internet radio. With those numbers, each stream would be worth 7/10ths of a penny. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s still up to twice what Spotify pays and in line with what Apple Music offers. What’s gets paid out is dynamic: if you decide to double your monthly subscription rate or you’re a lighter listener with half as many streams, than that per-stream rate automatically doubles. Maybe there would also be some way to indicate artists you’d like to receive a higher share of your subscription.

There are obviously some hurdles to overcome here, but from a technical standpoint it doesn’t really seem to be all that difficult. And unless there’s something I’m not considering, this option is pretty immune to fraud. What are you going to do? Be fraudulent with your own money that you opted-in to giving by falsifying streams? That’s not fraud… it’s just choosing how you’re allocating your money. Like a tip.

Is there anything to this idea? Would love to hear your thoughts via webmention:

(2026-05-20 - ETA: Olly’s idea about bringing a physical experience to digital music feels like a nice pairing with my ideas here.

L.L. Cool J at Thriftway

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:06:51 -0400

I was thinking today a bit about the first records I ever bought myself. It’s going back 40 years, so my memories be slightly switched about which purchase came first, but I know the two records and the two stores I got them from.

The first record was Big & Beautiful, the Fat Boys' third album, which came out in 1986. It was not exactly their best release and I wasn’t even aware it was out when I saw it on the shelf. I just knew I liked the Fat Boys, so I picked it up at The Comfort Station, a store in a small strip that sold greeting cards, flowers, music, and books. I would also pick up these great WCAU radio charts that outlined the hot hits of the day from Philly’s best pop station of the era. I don’t remember if I bought many other records from The Comfort Station before it closed a few years later. It’s now a generic Asian/Sushi restaurant.

The second record, also purchased in 1986 (through released in 1985), was L.L. Cool J’s Radio. This one was a seminal record for me because it was a “real” hip-hop record (Fat Boys were, at this point, more of a pop novelty act) with raw, stripped down drums, scratches, and vocals. And where did I get it? The local supermarket. While it may seem weird today to see vinyl popping up in mall stores like Urban Outfitters, back then records were sold in department stores and, apparently, grocery stores. So, one day when I was with my mom in suburban New Jersey picking up Cheerios and yogurt, I flipped through the records and begged her to buy me the album with the giant picture of a JVC RC-M90 boombox¹ on the front. I swore I’d pay her back from my allowance. The record is still in my collection and the boombox from the cover is part of the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame. The supermarket has a different name and owners now, but remains a small community supermarket. The area with the record display now houses frozen food.

As time went on, I’d buy records (and tapes and CDs) from the Pennsauken Mart, Tunes, Tower, Strawberries, or occasionally a place like Sound Express (I wasn’t really old enough to make it into Philly on my own to shop at Funk-O-Mart or Sounds of Market until well past their heyday) and a lot of gems found their way into my hands thanks to broke DJs unloading their collections. I hold The Comfort Station and Thriftway in my heart as the unlikely gateways into my lifelong music buying obsession.

My JVC vibrates the concrete… ↩︎

Occasional Weeknote #23

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 11:06:32 -0400

The snow from the storm I referenced weeks ago in my last update is still on the ground after weeks of sub-freezing temperatures. With it getting up into the 40s and 50s now, it’s starting to melt off which means soon I may be able to stop walking into the street to avoid unshoveled sidewalks.

I’ve had an unusually difficult the last month or so focusing on any one thing and feel like I’ve just been jumping from one thought and project to another without making much progress.

I did, however, manage to finally repair an audio cassette that snapped maybe 30 years ago. It was kind of fun and I’m glad I repaired it because it was a one-of-a-kind radio recording that I hadn’t digitized yet.

This week I took yet another fall during an evening run, faceplanting hard on the sidewalk after my foot catching on something. Two times in two months after years of fall-free running. Not sure what’s up and hoping it’s something simple as switching up my shoes and bringing more awareness to my running. (I smashed up my nose and forehead but a trip to the ER showed nothing broken or any concern in my head, so I managed to walk away with just some swelling and a stitch on my elbow.)

The Scent of a Photo - “And today, looking at that photo, I asked myself if, perhaps, it would have been better to avoid calling that ambulance.”
Write about the future you want - “Few will rise to the level of Ambassador Hasselhoff, but I don’t have to look far to find people around me who have inspired me by writing about the future they want.”
Hating the Game - Julius Goat: “Again, Bad Bunny is a U.S. citizen. He is Latin, and he sings in Spanish, neither of which is mutually exclusive with being a U.S. citizen, which is what he is. It would seem that his showcase on the Super Bowl halftime stage would represent the fact that this country is now a pluralistic modern nation containing vast cultural diversity, achieved through heroic effort and despite the opposition of a bunch of confederate-sympathizing bigots who are over-represented in our government and our institutions, and yet never stop feeling aggrieved and whining for their own exclusive spaces, and thus are the most coddled little babies of all time.”
What it was like to be a bush at Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance - Delightful little piece.

Media Notes

Reading

Finished Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico (“They would take two aspirins before climbing into bed and by Monday morning everything would be fine, or almost everything, or almost fine.")
Started and finished:
- You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson (“Too much lives in a moment / to not feed it to the fire in the heart, slow.")
- Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong (“where none of us / are children long enough / to love it”)
- Playlist: The Rebels and Revolutionaries of Sound by James Rhodes
Started the third volume of On the Calculation of Volume. The fourth volume comes out in a few months. Love this time loop serial.

Music

Ratté - “Smooth OpeRATTor” - Bill McClintok pairs Sadé and… Ratt. This is so good.

Movies

I rewatched Bergman’s transcendent Persona last weekend. That night I had a dream where I was hired as a caregiver for a dying William Faulkner (?!) and though we mostly got along, he did try to stab me with three needles at once.
The new Muppet Show was a blast. Hope there are more to come.
Arena was a fun low-budget Rocky-in-space-fighting-aliens movie from the late 80s I’d never seen. Total goofball nonsense, but good for what it is.

Some good videos

mental health: a critical perspective on social media - This guy’s videos are usually dryly hilarious commentary on things like “why everyone is a DJ” but this one takes a more serious topic and really nails it out of the park. Mental health shouldn’t just be another performative act on social media and those with more serious struggles need help and not chastisement or exposure as “content.” “So it’s OK to not be OK. But if you’re not OK in a way that’s not OK, that’s not OK, either.”

Site Notes

Added a TBR page so you can see what I’ve got sitting on my bedside table.
Added a few “see also” links to the media page.

Occasional Weeknote #22

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 16:20:14 -0400

This week I’m featured on Manuel Moreale’s excellent People & Blogs series, answering his questions about my silly little blog, nearly 28 years in. It’s very much worth browsing through his archive; I’ve found a lot of great new blogs that way. (My traffic today is up 2500% from yesterday… hah!)

We’ve got a big ol' winter storm headed our way, as does so much of the country. I hope anyone in the path stays safe and can enjoy the snow without danger, power outages, or great inconvenience.

Media Notes

Reading

Finished Borges' Ficciones. It was a Jared Henderson recommendation and I enjoyed a number of the stories.
Started Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico. It was on the Booker Prize shortlist and I’d seen it recommended by Anthony Jeselnik who is apparently a Booktoker these days?!!

Podcasts

Galaxy Brain: The Internet Was Built to Objectify Women - I’ve been enjoying this new podcast from The Atlantic and this particular episode took on a frustrating topic (frustrating in that it’s hard to get into it without getting riled up at how bad things are) in a thoughtful way.
The Zen Studies Podcast: How Buddhist is Zen? The Buddha’s Teachings Compared to Radical Nondualism - An interesting discussion on the differences between classic Buddhism/Theravada and Zen (which is in the Mahayana school), focused around non-dualism. I picked up a copy of David R. Loy’s Nonduality: In Buddhism and Beyond and plan to read more deeply on this this year.

Music

I listened to a lot of Madlib projects this week.

I also listened to a bunch of La Reezy, a young guy out of New Orleans. I dig his style. This track is a good starting point.

And just released today is Polish DJ Eprom’s We Are the Biobots. If you love 80s electro with lots of talkbox and skillful turntablism, this one will hit the spot. It is exactly what I was hoping for after having heard the first couple of singles. Tons of great guest DJs, too. I think I’ve linked this one before, but this track is a good starting point.

Some good videos

WING 🇰🇷 vs BLACKROLL 🇮🇹 | Grand Beatbox Battle 2025: World League | Solo Semi Final - Wing is pretty amazing. (He didn’t win the final, but I cannot get enough of his style.)
Sesame Street bloopers - I could watch these all day long.

Site Notes

Moved my “elsewhere” section from the about page to its own page.
Added a page on my stance on and use of AI
Added a “uses” page.
Updated my about me page and added an about the site page.

Occasional Weeknote #21

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 13:12:02 -0400

This was my longest length of time between Weeknotes but come on… you didn’t even notice, right?

The holidays and new year were nice and I certainly enjoyed two weeks off from work. There was plenty of time with family and friends, nice downtime to read and watch movies, and I started thinking through how we’re going to redesign our front room (finally). I started my break by faceplanting on the sidewalk in front of my house at the very end of a run (seriously, I was in my last 10 or 20 steps), which resulted in a gusher above my eyebrow (I see why pro wrestlers blade there - it’s impressive!) but thankfully the injury healed quickly and I had no concussion to deal with.

With the new year here, I continue to be excited about tinkering with my own site and side projects. The return of laze.net in 2024 proved to be a good move. While I don’t have any grand plans, I’m sure I’ll have some new small project I launch this year because I can’t seem to resist doing such things.

It will be another year where we’re all going to be saying, “This has been… a lot” to each other often, but here’s to hoping we can find some personal peace amidst the bullshit, continuing to make connections, keep connections, and be good to each other.

How the hell are you supposed to have a career in tech in 2026? - Anil tackles every employed and unemployed tech worker’s top question.
I read a number of year-end pieces on the IndieWeb, which were all interesting and had some pretty widely varying opinions.
- Amateurs and professionals: towards a less individual indieweb argues that and also that “trying to recreate social media on websites through protocols and processes such as POSSE and webmentions is no longer necessary.”
- On the flipside, A more social IndieWeb looks forward to using emerging technologies built on ActivityPub or ATProto (or new versions of existing ones like RSS) to make web publishing more social.
- And my favorite encapsulation on the future of the personal web, A Website to Destroy All Websites.
Vaccines Are Helping Older People More Than We Knew - Common vaccines for COVID, flu, and RSV are showing signs of “off-target benefits” to cardiovascular health, dementia, and other chronic illnesses. “Healthy older adults vaccinated against flu have substantially lower risks of hospitalization for heart failure, as well as for pneumonia and other respiratory infections. Vaccination against influenza has also been associated with lower risks of heart attack and stroke.” Sounds like a win-win (unless you’re MAHA or RFK Jr and this goes against your VACCINES EVIL narrative). Related: I got my second shingles vaccine this morning as well as my pneumonia vaccine.
MTV Rewind - MTV simulator that lets you recreate the feeling of MTV on its first day, by decade, or even by Yo! MTV Raps or Headbangers Ball filters. Fantastic.
Book Riot’s 2026 Read Harder Challenge - I’m not going to stress myself about “completing” this challenge, but I’m going to check things off as I go and use it as a guide for what I might want to read next when I’m not sure.
RIP Adam the Woo - One of the original and most consistent vloggers who always stayed true to his style. Adam the Woo > Mr. Beast any day.

Media Notes

Reading

Finished Strata: Stories from Deep Time by Laura Poppick, an immensely enjoyable book about the earth’s genealogy, studying deep time through geology.
I got Joe Pera’s A Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing but Using the Bathroom as an Escape. It is wonderful and should be in every bathroom.
Started and finished Kate Baer’s How About Now: Poems.
Started Borges' Ficciones.

I read 43 books last year, the most I’ve ever read in a year. This year, though, I’m not worrying about how many books I read because it’s a silly metric.

No goal, other than to Always Be Reading. As noted above, I am going to use the Book Riot 2026 Read Harder Challenge. I’m not concerned with trying to complete it, but what a good guidepost to use!

Two books I’m very excited about this year: Maria Popova’s 600-page follow-up to Figuring, titled Traversal, and Ruth Ozeki’s The Typing Lady and Other Fictions.

Music

Ólafur Arnalds – Sunrise Session III with Sandrayati, RAKEL & Salóme Katrín - Just so, so beautiful.
Ultramagnetic MCs: “Poppa Large” - The “Poppa Large” video from the early-90s remains one of my favorite all-time hip-hop videos because a.) it used the fire remix rather than the album version and b.) Kool Keith rhyming in a straightjacket? What better way to reference his supposed time in Bellvue. Pick ‘em up, pimplehead, pick ‘em up, picky.
Skillz 2025 Rap Up - It’s hard to believe he’s been doing these almost every year since 2002. (Fun fact: I once interviewed him while he ate a sandwich.)
BABYMETAL - ヘドバンギャー！！ 15th Night Ver. (OFFICIAL) - New version of a classic Babymetal track with a new video to go along with it.

Movies

Jess X. Snow’s Roots That Reach Toward The Sky is a beautiful short film about family, immigrants, and community.
The Thelonious Monk documentary Rewind & Play is mesmerizing and frustrating (in seeing how Monk was treated).

Some good videos

Techno Syndrome (Mortal Kombat) - The Immortals [Speed Bag Cover] - Did you know there’s a whole channel of a guy using a speedbag as a percussion instrument? I didn’t.
The Self-Taught Legend Saga - I have not watched this four-hour video but the story itself and the way it’s blown up is just kinda weird. Guy goes on-stage at Smalls during one of their frequent jam sessions and proceeds to lose it on the other folks on stage and yelling about how he’s “a self-taught fucking legend.” And since Smalls streams all of their shows live, it went out to the world. Judging by other videos that are popping up on YouTube, he’s capitalizing on his minor celebrity. I don’t want to make any assumptions about his mental state, intentions, etc., but the whole situation is just odd.
Hope is not a feeling - John Green with a vlogbrothers banger.

Site Notes

Posted two year-end posts: 2025 in Running and 2025 Music Year-in-Review.
First post of the new year: Qobuz vs. Spotify (or, Yet another post about a dude trying to leave Spotify).
Second post of the new year: Monkey Mind Tea Brewing
New archive posts: Three distinct record shops in the East Village (from 2011), Productivity, Organization, and an Attempt to Simplify (from 2008 - it was interesting to look back on my attempt to simplify from almost 18 years ago).
Updated genealogy-centric content on Find the Dash: Beneficial Uses of AI in Genealogy (the updated portion is a significantly harsher view on the use of GenAI in genealogy).

A panorama of an abandoned building with some great graffiti. More images from this visit will be shared in an upcoming post.

Monkey mind tea brewing

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 14:31:42 -0400

It’s the second steep of a relatively gentle green tea. I’m going with about 170 degrees Fahrenheit and though it’s recommended to brew gong fu style with short steepings, I’m brewing for a couple of minutes with fewer leaves this go around.

I leave my tea for a moment and walk away.

Later… 20 minutes? 30 minutes? 45 minutes?… I come back to have some lunch and find my tea still steeping on the counter.

I take a sip and grimace at the foul bitterness of a forgotten, cold, over-brewed cup.

Tea as meditation has been an archetype for thousands of years. It requires simple focus and attention on the delicate leaves to properly extract the right flavor at just the right temperature. A few seconds in either direction can change the result.

Turning that on its head, a bitter taste like today’s cup is a good smack in the head to remind me to slow down, pay attention, and stop rushing about.

Qobuz vs. Spotify (or, Yet another post about a dude trying to leave Spotify)

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 12:56:34 -0400

My first paid streaming service was MOG. I joined in October 2010, paying $4.99 a month (!) and really liked it. The interface was a little odd and the way the queue operated took some getting used to, but it was a quirky service with some really nice features that I quite enjoyed. I stuck with it until it sold to Apple and became Beats Music (which then went away in favor of Apple Music) in early 2014. At that point, I switched over to Spotify, which I’ve been with ever since.

Overall, I’ve been happy with Spotify. The UI is alright. The queue functionality has always bothered me (and for years, my play queue will completely clear if I go from wireless to mobile while listening… super annoying). Their Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists were generally useful for me. Their AI features? Meh. Audiobooks? Don’t care. Podcasts? I use Pocketcasts. Higher bitrate audio? Fine, but I don’t obsess over “sound quality” beyond a certain point (more below). The new mixing features? Kinda neat.

And, of course, like anyone with a conscience, I’ve been bothered by the litany of Spotify’s transgressions. Enough so that I’m finally looking for a way out.

Why’s it taking me so long? Mostly the obvious (and, really, not totally justifiable) reasons: 1. the rest of my family is on so it’s going to be a hassle to change, 2. I’ve got 11+ years of playlists and listening history built up, and 3. waaaaah, I just don’t wanna.

But I’m giving it a shot anyway.

I started with a free month of Qobuz, chosen primarily because they’re solely a music service, they seem to be more focused on music nerds than casual listeners, and they pay the artists the best of anyone in the game by a good margin. They don’t have a free tier, so no worry about ICE ads. I’ve searched a bit about their parent company and haven’t found anything bothersome (yet).

So, let’s run down the list of my observations of how Qobuz stacks up against Spotify:

Vs.

Qobuz Advantages

Label support - Yes, Spotify gives label info by album and you can sorta search by label, but Qobuz has actual label profile pages and, importantly, you can “follow” a label to keep up with their new releases.
Better artist payout, by far - For 1,000 streams, Spotify will pay between $3-5. Qobuz? $13-$22. (Apple Music, for comparison, sits in between at $7-10.) Qobuz offers four times the payout of Spotify.
No ads = No ICE ads
No donations to genocidal companies (afaik)
Actually useful song credits - Song credit info is quite complete and you can view them for a single track or an entire album. Fantastic! (Though albums, frustratingly, can still display and be sorted by the date they were re-released rather than originally released. Couldn’t we please just show both dates, ie. “2025/1967”? Also, there is some weird text display happening with Qobuz where it displays things like “Main Artist” as “MainArtist.")
Album reviews/overviews when browsing are a really nice way to read up on an album before playing it.
Probably the best service for jazz fans thanks to very good selection and the two previous features.
Better queue control - “Play next” - what a concept! Spotify only lets you add songs to the end of a queue. Qobuz also doesn’t clear a queue after it has played songs. This can be good, but is annoying when the play position randomly jumps back to the beginning of the queue.

Qobuz Disadvantages

Artist disambiguation sucks - Half Pint is always my test here. There’s the reggae singer, an 1990s Miami Bass rapper, and some other small timers. First of all, there are albums that have the reggae singer Half Pint’s photo on the cover but clearly have all the rappers' songs, so there are illegitimate releases out there the same as other services. But worst of all is that they’ve combined all Half Pints into one artist, which really devalues each artists' individual contributions. I remember contacting Spotify about this years ago and they corrected it for me. I don’t see a way to report issues with tracks, artists, or albums on the Qobuz platform.
Playlists max out at 1,000 tracks - This sucks. Spotify allows 10,000 per playlist and I get close to that way more often than you’d think. So, my “all-time favorites” playlist on Spotify was broken into seven separate playlists when I ported it over to Qobuz. Qobuz has an unlimited (I think) “favorite tracks” area which I’d be willing to use in lieu of a single playlist, but there’s no way to favorite more than one track at a time!
No lyrics
The built-in scrobbler is way broken - It sends a “listen” ping to last.fm every time you hit play. So, rather than 60% into a track it will log the track as “listened” as soon as you hit play. And if you pause and hit play? It gets logged again. It’s a total mess. I’ve turned it off and instead use Panoscrobbler on Android, which works well with it. I really hope Qobuz can fix the internal scrobbling eventually. (I see in the Qobuz subreddit that the scrobbler is “working again,” but I have not personally confirmed.)

It’s a Wash

Qobuz is missing some tracks and transfer is imperfect. But it’s all close enough.
Pricing is in line with Spotify’s (and maybe even a touch cheaper).

FAQ:

Why don’t you just stop streaming and try building a physical and digital collection of your own?

Hey, Bucky, I’ve already got substantial physical and digital collections. I never unloaded my physical collection, so I still have all my vinyl, cassettes, and CDs (and, yes, 8-tracks, too, though those were largely inherited) going back to the first ones I ever bought. I’ve also got a large, but nicely curated digital collection organized with decent metadata.

The thing is: streaming is still a super convenient way to check out new albums and artists. And for driving? A+.

I love physical media, I love mp3s/FLACs, and I love streaming all for different reasons. They can co-exist.

Why didn’t you try Apple Music/Deezer/TIDAL?

TIDAL’s UI annoys me for some reason and they’ve got their own corporate issues. Apple Music, I’m not in the ecosystem and it feels like an ethically lateral move, anyway (though I saw a three month trial floating around recently, so maybe I should try, just for completeness sake?).

I used ad-supported Deezer a bit and kind of liked it. Now that my month is Qobuz is up, I’m going to give ad-free Deezer a shot and will report back here. (They’ve already added some neat looking features, like built in universal playlists that can be shared with subscribers of other services.)

But what about sound quality?

You know, I guess it’s good? I went out of my way to listen to the hi-res/1-bit/DSD/blah blah blah versions of albums and they sounded great. But could I tell a difference between that and a 320k MP3 or CD-quality audio on my decent-but-not-high-end headphones? I’m 50 and though I don’t have hearing loss, I’m not sure I could really tell. I try not to be too precious about it if my ears can’t tell the difference and it doesn’t make an appreciable impression on me.

2025 Music Year-in-Review

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 22:25:00 -0400

Here are my favorite albums of this year, in alphabetical order. (See my list on Album Whale for a more visual take with all the same commentary.)

Nothing high-level to share about the year other than “there was a lotta good stuff.”

Favorite Albums

Aesop Rock: Black Hole Superette
There aren’t too many hip-hop artists with ten full-length albums out still doing it as well as Aesop. He released two fantastic LPs this year, either of which could fill this space, to be honest. While I Heard It’s a Mess There Too is a banger, I’ll give this spot to the hour-long Black Hole Superette, which is filled with Aesop’s complex vocabulary and references over heavy, off-kilter production.
Babymetal: Metal Forth
Not since their debut release have I enjoyed a Babymetal album this much. Lots of fun guest spots from folks like Tom Morello and Slaughter to Prevail with wicked accompanying videos, to boot. (I maintain, with no sarcasm, that their show that I saw back in the mid-2010s was one of the best shows I’ve seen in the last 15 years.)
Boog Brown: Super Useful Tools
One of those EPs that left me wanting more. Great production and thoughtful lyrics from an emcee I wish got more attention.
The Bug vs Ghost Dubs: Implosion
Throw some headphones on, zone out, and let the ultra-heavy bass and swirling dub surround you. Definitely not for everyone, but if the words “swirling dub” and “ultra-heavy bass” got you all giddy, this is your shit.
Xhosa Cole: On a Modern Genius Vol. 1
Thoroughly enjoyable takes on Thelonious Monk classics. I think I listened to this one most of any one on this list (perhaps because it came out in January).
De La Soul: Cabin in the Sky
I’ve been… unimpressed… with the Mass Appeal releases that were so hyped this year, so I waited with a clenched jaw for the new De La album, the first after Dave’s death. Thankfully, my concerns were unfounded and this album is nothing short of an absolute joy.
Russell Hall: Dragon of the South
Runs the gamut from avant garde to experimental (“Time Seems to Stop in LA”) to mellow ballad standards (“Embraceable You”).
Igorrr: Amen
Everything I’d hoped it would be. Intense, heavy, melodic, and surprising.
Natalia Lafourcade: Cancionera
Another beauty of a record.
Linda May Han Oh, Ambrose Akinmusire, and Tyshawn Sorey: Strange Heavens
Three modern masters of their respective instruments as a trio? Yes, please. Some truly fantastic contemporary jazz.
Makaya McCraven: Off the Record (4 EPs)
McCraven returns to his original methods of recording improvised sets, reworking them by chopping and rearranging them back in the studio, and then heading back out on the road to play the remixed tracks. Every bit as engaging as his best work, I really love this approach to modern improvised jazz.
Pachyman: Another Place
I spent much of the first few months of this year listening to Pachyman’s discography, really digging his approach to dubbed out soul and funk. His latest release is a fun listen with just the right amount of heavy bass, spaced out synths, and light vocal touches.
RíRá: Notes of Distinguished Ghosts
Old school Irish emcee (seriously, I remember listening to his group ScaryÉire on the Planet Rap compilation in 1993!) does mature, grown man hip-hop with the best of them on his latest. Dark boom bap beats match RíRá’s gravelly voice on super solid tracks like “Magnetic,” “Ever Present,” and “Moves.” I also dig the thoughtful “Take It Easy on You,” which captures the difficulty of being a middle-aged human trying to stay creative.
Weekend Plans: After Hours
The latest in Richmond, VA’s lineage of soulful, funky live hip-hop/R&B going back to Jazz Poets Society. Love “Dance with Me” and “BLE” but I think “Laundry” is the sleeper track of the year. (My niece’s husband plays keys in the band, but I’d be saying this even if he didn’t.)

Favorites From 2024, discovered this year

STHLM svaga: Plays Carter, Plays Mitchell, Plays Shepp
Quiet Swedish free jazz ensemble takes on pieces from jazz legends Ron Carter, Roscoe Mitchell, Archie Shepp, and John Coltrane. A really sublime experience considering the intensity of some of the work. Good headphone listening.

Stats

Includes streaming, web radio, digital media, physical media, and even some live music. (via last.fm)

Top 10 Artists (of 3,352 listened to this year): Makaya McCraven, Pachyman, Aesop Rock, Alborosie, KRS-One, De La Soul, Sol Messiah, The Roots, , GZA/Genius, Skillinjah
Total Tracks: 9,487 (up from 6,982 last year); 8,821 unique (via)

Favorite Tracks of the Year Playlist

Each quarter of the year, I build playlists with music (of any time period) that I’m currently digging and listening to. Then, at the end of the year, I use Playlist Sorter to pull out any tracks from the current year out of those four playlists and add them to a final year-end “favorite tracks of the year” playlist on Spotify. Thanks to nifty internet magic, you can listen to it on other platforms instead of evil Spotify! (Cover art by my kiddo.)

Tracks are ordered by when I added them throughout the year, not necessarily by when they were released.

Expand/collapse the tracklist below.

Mantronix: “Don’t Bring Me Nothing Soft”
Norman Sann: “Big Wheels”
Project Gemini: “Darkness Rising”
Matt Berry: “Wedding Photo Stranger”
Sam Cohen: “Continuum Part 1”
Xhosa Cole: “Rhythm-a-ning”
Sizzla: “Victory”
Babylon Dead: “Real Badman”
Count Bass D: “He’s a B-Boy”
Konteks: “Street Prophet”
Reef The Lost Cauze: “B. Dawk”
Mantronix: “Rockin Worldwide”
MC Paul Barman: “Groundhog Trap”
Seven Da Pantha: “Prove Me Wrong”
Brother Ali: “Two Dudes”
Brother Ali: “Head Heart Hands”
Dr. Fubbs: “Nobody wants to be all alone”
Paradime: “THE SOUND OF THE MUSIC”
Sumac Dub: “Des Milliards d’Étoiles”
K-Natural: “Slhick Tawlk (with The Pharcyde)”
Smif-N-Wessun: “Medina”
Lack Of Afro: “Spooky”
Tape Flip: “Sound In Space”
Godfather Don: “Beat & A Bassline”
DJ Slowz: “60 Năm: “Full Dub””
Talib Kweli: “Native Sons: “Part 2"”
Daemon: “Megalodon (Top of the World)”
Doechii: “Anxiety”
MC Paul Barman: “Cologne Alone”
Sol Monk: “Space Travel”
PANTERA BLUE: “no fui yo”
Naïssam Jalal: “Souffle #1”
Fatbabs: “Hurry Up”
CICI Zhu: “C.R.E.A.M.”
WITCH: “Queenless King”
Men I Trust: “The Landkeeper”
Ras Teo: “Sensimilla”
Nowaah The Flood: “Never Expected”
The Sure Fire Soul Ensemble: “Contemplation”
RíRá: “Magnetic”
Your Old Droog: “The Glitch”
Boog Brown: “What You Want?”
Natalia Lafourcade: “Lágrimas Cancioneras”
Billy Idol: “Still Dancing”
Wu-Tang Clan: “Mandingo”
Norman Sann: “I Can Get You to Move”
Vinnie Paz: “Battle Scars (Pharaoh Overlords)”
Jah Warrior: “Ina Di Saga Dub”
Alborosie: “Come My Way”
thegoodnews.: “human zone”
Cantrips: “Moonlight”
Sublime: “Slow Ride”
Tom Caruana: “Influential”
Stephen McCraven: “Jack the Riffer”
Stephen McCraven: “Silhouette of Eric”
billy woods: “BLK XMAS”
Surprise Chef: “Bully Ball”
Pachyman: “Hard to Part”
Igorrr: “Blastbeat Falafel”
Marshall Allen’s Ghost Horizons: “Stay Lifted: “Live””
Oddisee: “Small Talk”
La Banda Chuska: “Basic Bichos”
La Banda Chuska: “Bailando Con Mi Oscuridad”
Calibro 35: “Nautilus”
Calibro 35: “The Twang”
6ixth Element: “Halloween Havoc”
DJ Hoppa: “Fan The Flame”
Cienfuego: “Wild Wild West”
Skarra Mucci: “Ragga Blasta”
Marie A. Douglas: “Tray”
Lee “Scratch” Perry: “Rude Walking: “DJ Drez Remix””
Chali 2na: “Melt Like Plastic”
Nicole Glover: “No. 2”
Tim Barnes: “The Year Of The Rabbit: “Bonus Track””
Olympia Vitalis: “Angel Patience”
Born I: “Being Enough”
distorter: “Psychobaby”
Brian Jackson: “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”
J Sw!ft: “Wild Animal (with K-Natural & AKIL THE MC)”
Cham: “Hustling In My Blood”
Tyler, The Creator: “Big Poe (feat. Sk8brd)”
Born I: “Silent Illumination”
Born I: “Suchness”
Samantha Schmütz: “Feitiço”
Lewis Bennett: “Ain’t No Dub”
Count Bass D: “Mastermind”
Laufey: “Lover Girl”
SkillinJah: “BadMan Chart”
BABYMETAL: “Song 3”
O’hene Savant: “OSMium”
Dojo Cuts: “I Got You”
Preservation: “Muay Sok”
Linda May Han Oh: “Noise Machinery”
Laufey: “Mr. Eclectic”
Laufey: “Clean Air”
Johnny Osbourne: “Don’t Need No Ice Cream Love (feat. Alborosie)”
Art-X: “Black Cat”
Kresten Osgood: “Johnny Come Lately”
K.A.A.N.: “I.D.C.”
Locksmith: “Culture”
Badge Époque Ensemble: “Empathic Vertigo”
AWOL One: “Thrashing Things Up”
HUMAN ERROR CLUB: “OOO WHAT’S THAT ft. Quelle Chris & Cavalier”
Lower Life Forms: “Doom on the Beatbox”
Bush Babees: “The Bush”
Aesop Rock: “The Cut”
Aesop Rock: “Full House Pinball”
Fergus Quill: “Make ‘Em Sweat”
Fergus Quill: “Banjo Returns”
billy woods: “Complications (feat. Aesop Rock)”
Godfather Don: “New York City”
BlabberMouf: “Three Six Steez”
De La Soul: “The Package”
Chip Fu: “Warning”
Muadeep: “KYLLI MA”
Aesop Rock: “Checkers”

2025 in Running

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 14:11:29 -0400

Since running is one of the few habits I’ve been able to keep up with consistently over the last few years, I figured I’d celebrate (/brag uncomfortably about) my victories a bit here. At 50, I’m really glad that I started running seriously in my late 30s. It’s kept me sane, it’s helped keep me healthy, and it gives a sense of accomplishment when I’m able to get out there and put the miles in even when I absolutely don’t feel like it.

Yearly Goal:

2025 km (1258.28 miles)
Reached my goal on December 26.
Final mileage: 1275.39 miles (2052.54 km)
I’ve reached my yearly goal four years in a row now.

Monthly Goal:

100+ miles per month
I’ve reached my monthly goal 48 months in a row.

Races:

5k in May (22nd annual!): 25:04 (almost 4 minutes slower than my PR two years earlier, but oh well).
Half a backyard ultra: It was a 50k, of which I ran half. We did a 5k each hour on the hour. Total running time 2:41:19 for 16.11 miles.
Half-marathon to celebrate the end of my 40s: 2:01:11 (only 4 minutes slower than the same race 11 years ago, albeit this time on a significantly flatter course thanks to the government shutdown).

Shoes:

Brooks Launch 10
Brooks Glycerin GTS 21
Brooks Glycerin 21

Falls:

Only one, just over a week ago when I faceplanted right in front of my house. I had a nice gusher over my eye, but thankfully no concussion so I was back out hitting the pavement (with my feet, not my face) a few days later.

Next year? 2026 km and keep the 100+ mile months going. February will be 50 straight months and is also the hardest month to hit the goal since it’s shorter and can have unpredictable weather.

laze.net

Garbage Bandcamp pages

Junited (updated throughout June)

Productive weekend

Occasional Weeknote #29

Some Links Worth Sharing

Media Notes

Reading

Music

Movies

Site Notes

All at once

That time I interviewed a civil rights leader and anti-rap activist

Occasional Weeknote #28

Some Links Worth Sharing

Media Notes

Podcasts

Music

Movies

Some good videos

Site Notes

The nightmare of changing your internet bundle

Occasional Weeknote #27

Some Links Worth Sharing

Media Notes

Reading

Podcasts

Music

Movies

Site Notes

Used Computer Locator - April 1990

Replanting

Occasional Weeknote #26

Some Links Worth Sharing

Media Notes

Reading

Podcasts

Music

Movies

Some good videos

Site Notes

On the guilt of quiet days

Occasional Weeknote #25

Some Links Worth Sharing

Media Notes

Music

Site Notes

Occasional Weeknote #24

Some Links Worth Sharing

Media Notes

Reading

Podcasts

Music

Movies

Some good videos

Site Notes

Deezer vs. Spotify (and Qobuz) (or, Yet another post about a dude trying to leave Spotify, part 2)

Vs.

Deezer Advantages

Deezer Disadvantages

It’s a Wash

FAQ:

Service idea: roll-your-own streaming subscription (with artist royalties!)

L.L. Cool J at Thriftway

Occasional Weeknote #23

Some Links Worth Sharing

Media Notes

Reading

Music

Movies

Some good videos

Site Notes

Occasional Weeknote #22

Some Links Worth Sharing

Media Notes

Reading

Podcasts

Music

Some good videos

Site Notes