Replacing my blog at http://pablosmoglives.wordpress.com
23 Nov 2021 6 minute read 0 comments Nathan Payne
Until yesterday, I didn't know what "praise and worship music" meant. Most "praise and worship" music grates on my ears, and I never listen to it. I usually see (or hear) it as bad art, and not truly capable of praising or worshiping anything. It'...
16 Nov 2021 5 minute read 0 comments Nathan Payne
One of the greatest flaws in rap lyrics is the over-reliance on rhyme for its own sake. It's a remedial, beginner's device, and no one who has ever written more than 2 songs is entirely unguilty of it. There's an inherent writer's thrill at discove...
12 Nov 2021 4 minute read 0 comments Nathan Payne
When discussing the lack of interesting and/or talented independent musicians today, there are two names I never mention: Lana Del Rey and Jack White. I actually like Lana Del Rey, but I never mention her because she's an obvious, self-professed in...
6 Nov 2021 7 minute read 0 comments Nathan Payne
I can't listen to The Handsome Family anymore. I was a big Handsome Family fan from the late 90's through about 2009. We shared a back page in the Illinois Entertainer, in which my band had received a 25-word write-up; they had an ad for a show or...
1 Nov 2021 1 minute read 0 comments Nathan Payne
I have been known to compare Anthony Fauci to Josef Mengele, but I think there's more to it than that. Thanks to the video posted below, in addition to Mengele I now also liken Fauci to Jim Jones, who forced his followers to commit mass suicide by d...
31 Oct 2021 3 minute read 0 comments Nathan Payne
I finally made it through the film Chicuarotes, which features this great version of "I Fought The Law:" I can't tell if singing it in Nāhuatlahtolli is an attempt at "decolonization," which is the kind of thing you'd expect from people today, or si...
22 Oct 2021 3 minute read 0 comments Nathan Payne
A funeral blocked me from leaving a cemetery the other day. I heard nearby mariachi music while I was walking between the graves, and after awhile thought it might be cool to find out where the music was coming from. The search was not difficult. ...
20 Oct 2021 4 minute read 0 comments Nathan Payne
I feel like I do when a beloved celebrity dies. While looking for images to use as a thumbnail for this article, I did an image search for "We Are The World," and was horrified to learn that they remade the song sometime in the last decade or 2 for...
18 Oct 2021 3 minute read 0 comments Nathan Payne
In September 2014, students from a small, socialist farming school in the state of Guerrero were traveling in a caravan of 5 buses to Iguala, Mexico. When they arrived in town, they were followed by police. The police stopped them, blocked them in,...
17 Oct 2021 4 minute read 0 comments Nathan Payne
Apparently, one of my old lyrics is trending as a hashtag on Twitter. Something similar happened to me in Hollywood: I heard a line from a song I used to play regularly at a well-attended open mic in a movie that came out the next year. The song w...
