Monthly Archives: May 2012

by Dr. Spin

I took the first few steps in my music education degree while living in the ad hoc “music dormitory” at UNT, Bruce Hall. Although I was a pretty active musician for a high school kid, this was an entirely different environment with a ridiculously high level of musicianship. There was also an unfortunate bouquet of jazz snobbery that, as an insecure freshman, was hard to ignore. With a world-class 18 year-old bassist across the hall warming up on Portrait of Tracy every day, it felt a bit bourgeois to examine Presto too closely.  A self-taught garage band bassist like me seemed to have no place, so my playing relationship with Lee abruptly ended late in 1989. The last passage in Rush’s catalog I learned was the bass break at 3:15 in Show Don’t Tell. read more at the Pharmacy

by Dr. Spin

Although I have known about Kraftwerk for decades, I finally began to really check them out earlier this year. After recently watching a BBC documentary on British synth-pop, I was beset by a craving for more of their stuff. My budget for CD purchases, however, was pretty tight at the time. Very rarely do I trade in CDs, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

The next disc on my list was Trans-Europe Express, but after I had already done the deed I went to the racks to find that the single copy that Waterloo had in stock had sold, so I picked up Man-Machine instead. As I was checking out, a gentleman in the line behind me, who had  a stack of vinyl under his right arm, commented on the influence of Kraftwerk and of Man-Machine in particular.  Encouraging!  you are encouraged to read more at the pharmacy…