Category Archives: the pharmacy of dr spin

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…

by Dr. Spin

Because we were all bussed across town, there was a well-established tradition of carpooling among my fellow high school band members.  By the first week of summer band my freshman year I was already catching a ride with several other band students from my neighborhood. The driver and her boyfriend were unrelenting Rush fans, so when Power Windows was released later that year, it was a daily listen for several months. This was where I was first exposed to Rush, and although it wasn’t the kind of teenage epiphany that is usually associated with the backs of cars, it was no less life-changing. find out more at the Pharmacy…

by Dr. Spin

Although the crowded gallery was buzzing with anticipation, I was standing with my arms resolutely folded in defiant objection. The visiting artist was going to deep-fry a saxophone, arguably to reveal to the crowd the unique beauty of the sounds it made as it met a distinctively Texan demise. It was a bust. The like-new tenor sizzled in pretty much the same way that anything does when coated in batter and lamb casings and immersed in boiling oil.  Sticking a microphone in the pot didn’t really make the experience any more interesting. The general tone of the crowd was one of confused disappointment.  I am not above destructive musical practices, but I was offended.  I couldn’t tell if we had been suckered or if we had witnessed an overintellectualized delusion, but in any case I felt that the whole event was vacuous as an aesthetic experience. read more at the Pharmacy…

by Dr. Spin

I was in South Texas enjoying the buzz of mexican marimba performances at an ethnomusicology conference, but the night before, McAllen experienced an intense storm that cut a swath of destruction through parts of town. The video footage I saw was terrifying, with windows shattering under the onslaught of hail propelled by high winds and living rooms pounded by hail and rain. When I was listening to Noctourniquet, the new release from The Mars Volta, I was driving around McAllen the day after this disaster, and the streets were cast with a desolate veil. Despite being a growing city of over 100,000, parts of the city looked abandoned and decades older since last I saw them. Everywhere I looked, paint was peeled off of the north side of buildings, windows were broken and boarded up, and roofs were missing massive sections of shingles.  read more at the Pharmacy…

From the Pharmacy of Dr. Spin

My main gig in the mid 90s was working as a lackey in Blockbuster Music’s flagship store in Lewisville. In a way, the store was the last step in the evolution of music consumerism before the internet made hardcopy obsolete. The store was constructed with a complicated array of directional speakers and taped video that pummeled the customer with images and sounds as they moved through the store. When in the country section, you would only hear George Strait and Garth Brooks, but as the customer moved to the rock section, they would magically move into an environment bathed in the newest hits from Soundgarden and Smashmouth. read more at the pharmacy…