Ethan Hein

On NJ Transit on the way home and the train just died.

Just another day/reminder of how “the richest and most powerful nation in the world” cannot do mass transit.

We can afford a war and build concentration camps, but not mass transit.

I was lucky to catch Jerry at the end of the 80s and yeah, he played some nice stuff then

I don't yet know who I'm going to get but yes I'm predicting a lot of bedroom producers and self-taught singer-songwriters. My people!

I never understood the whole "no junk no soul" trope because if you look at the dates, Coltrane's playing improved HUGELY when he kicked heroin

In addition to teaching history of 20th century pop next semester, I'm also teaching a pop theory course for non-majors, and that should be an interesting challenge. I'm going to approach it less as "learning music theory" and more "learning how to learn music theory."

NYC

I'm begging right wingers to actually listen to songs, or at least develop a sense of irony

My wife has a lot of family in Poland, and one of her cousins was asking how the US can possibly afford this. The answer is, our public infrastructure and services suck colossally

That would be ideal but I need to get paid

I thought that for literally decades until I learned about tuning history

Oh for sure, he has a wonderful combination of deep research and clear, concise writing.

Funny how you dialed in a just third through intuition

Always a reasonable solution

Looks like excellent summer reading!

Haven't, should I?

The temptation once we get to 1938 is to hand the entire class over to @andrewhickey.500songs.com and I will certainly be referencing the podcast.

So anyway, I'm happy to get to engage all this stuff and it will be fun leading the undergrads through it.

I did stumble on some jug band stuff via the shadowy recesses of the Grateful Dead's repertoire but it's not like they gave any context for those songs.

I didn't know that jazz, blues, country and R&B were all pretty much the same thing at first, that Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys existed and were huge.

I didn't know about blackface minstrelry, and while I didn't enjoy finding out about it, you can't understand American pop culture at all until you do.

Until later in life, I didn't know anything about pre-rock pop music aside from a few blues singers who the Rolling Stones liked. I knew jazz, but not the showtunes that jazz grew out of. I knew bluegrass, but not the old-time that bluegrass grew out of. I didn't know ragtime beyond Joplin.

In happier professional news, I'm officially teaching a couple of sections of NYU's new History of 20th Century American Popular Music class in the fall. The cool thing is that it is not a rock history course; we don't get to Elvis until the midterm. We spend a whole lot of time before WWII.

I like Ted and support his whole project but he does get out in front of his skis on some topics

Yeah, I had many other jobs before this, it's easy to imagine being elsewhere, just no fun

Man I am definitely feeling the grief piece. I never felt like I belonged in a job until this one, and I feel like I'm contemplating losing a piece of myself that was hard won over decades

Being underemployed has been a positive with my kids being little and my wife being overemployed but soon they won't need so much supervision and bringing places

Yeah I am very skilled at the doing but not skilled at the marketing, would need a partner

Yes advancing human knowledge but I have the internet for that

Getting invited to present at conferences is nice but is not going to pay my kids' college tuition

I definitely can't motivate for academic writing, I have a ton of it in the pipeline but if it's just going to be CV lines that don't get me a real job then why?