Category: Music

  • There goes the neighborhood

    The Lutheran church across the street from my apartment building set up a little performance area tonight, with a backdrop cloth that said “Elvis Lives”. When the sun went down, fifteen cars showed up, then people got out of their cars with folding chairs and arranged them about fifty feet across the parking lot from…

  • Choux Pastry Heart

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0gpaRHBLSk] I am a sucker for this song for more than one reason. 1.) I’ve been sucked in by Corinne Rae Bailey’s bluesy voice, and I love bluesy voices. And 2.) The way I was introduced to her was just the other day when my friend Paul forwarded me this video because it has part…

  • You can stand under my umbrella

    A return to a mood I have not felt in a while. Recently I have been sort of obsessed with the song “Umbrella” which is sung by the very popular Barbados-born Rihanna. And when I say popular, I mean popular. You go to this woman’s myspace page and look at how many “friends” she has.…

  • Happy Things

    1. One of the things I love lately is that when you do a search on “Christopher Barzak” at Amazon.com, the number two listing is Rufus Wainwright’s new album “Release the Stars”.  This makes me ridiculously happy for some reason that, as Amazon says, customers who have pre-ordered my novel have gone on to buy…

  • BJ OMalley

    BJ OMalley was one of the performers at the Stage last night.  Her songs were amazing.  I’d classify her as Alt Country in the vein of singers like Neko Case.  But there’s a touch of Janis Joplin in her as well, at least there was last night.  Go to her myspace page and listen to…

  • The Stage is back, see you there…

    The STAGE. Come to it

  • Ytown on Stage

    Last night at the Stage was just the most wonderful experience.  There were so many people there, so much talent and creativity and expression, and so much of it just really really good.  My friend Brooke does the most amazing things for this city and I sometimes wonder if enough people actually understand it.  I…

  • I’ll be there.

    Stop by and have some fun this Friday at The Stage at the Oakland Center for the Arts. I’ll be reading a short short story called “The Flood” (which is being published in Foundation’s 100th issue this August), and there’ll be comedians, dramatic monologues, crazy improvised hallucinogenic music-video imitations, tap dancing, independent film trailer releases, poetry,…

  • Monkey Majik

    I ran across this song of the day at NPR’s website today.  It’s a song by a band in Sendai, Japan called “Monkey Majik”, two white brothers from Canada who went to Japan to teach English and stayed, and two Japanese members.  They’re apparently getting pretty popular in Japan.  It’s a blend of pop and hip…