Christmas sweaters have a strange effect on people. They treasure them like any other sentimental object and parade them around when given the opportunity, sometimes completely oblivious to the ridiculousness. As I was talking about the Christmas Sweaters last year at the Center for Hearing and Speech, the director mentioned her “Favorite Christmas Sweater.” Every [...]
Author Archives: matthew
Welcome to the Beginning of 31 Days of Christmas Sweaters
December 2, 2009 – 12:23 am
Good tidings to you!! Thank you for stopping by here to celebrate the glorious time of year where eyes are assaulted with bright glittery things attached to our houses, walls and even clothes. Ahh, the clothes. During no other month is it acceptable to adorn yourself in green, red and shiny. Any other time of [...]
What’s Your Goal?
November 6, 2009 – 4:54 pm
As I was maladroitly fumbling with a picnic blanket last year, Grace Rodriguez asked me, “What’s your goal?” That question, “What’s Your Goal?” became an important one for me over the past year. It’s become a mantra of sorts, a question I repeat to myself internally and a query I pose aloud to others. As [...]
Pitchfork’s Top 200 Albums of the 2000′s, By The Numbers
October 2, 2009 – 12:49 pm
Graphs are fun. Here’s a look at Pitchfork’s Top 200 Albums of the Decade, broken down by year. While poring over Pitchfork’s Top 200 Albums of the year, I got the feeling that 2000 and 2001 were popping up more than any other year. I put together a quick spreadsheet of the numbers of releases [...]
The 20 Best Albums of the Decade?
October 1, 2009 – 8:37 pm
Tomorrow Pitchfork debuts the final 20 in their list of the Top 200 albums Of The Decade. On the whole, most of those albums are ones that I’ve listened to over and over again. They’ve provided a aural component to most events of the decade. Some have added spice, some have been bitter reminders of [...]
New Rice course: Engineering for Art Conservation
August 24, 2009 – 10:59 am
As a continuation of this summer’s Engineering and Design for Art and Artifact Conservation (http://edaac.rice.edu), Rice University is offering a fall course entitled Engineering for Art Conservation. I have been hired on as Rice faculty to teach this one semester course with the hope that we can convert it to a year long program exploring [...]
Bands (and Scientists) Can Get Organized
August 12, 2009 – 1:10 pm
There’s a widely held stereotype that scientists and musicians are poorly organized. Like any stereotype there are reasons behind this: for scientists there’s another widely held belief that they are pack rats, accumulating any bit of information that could be needed at a later date. This contributes to the disheveled and disordering mental image most [...]
2009′s State of the Houston Music Scene – An Outsider’s View
July 31, 2009 – 10:32 am
Yesterday’s post provided a reality check for the Houston music community over the course of the past year. The post highlighted the great successes the community had experienced from club openings to artist signings to the positive effects of touring. This perspective was provided from someone knowing the trials and tribulations of each of these [...]
2009′s State of the Houston Music Scene – An Insider’s View
July 30, 2009 – 2:51 pm
A couple weeks ago, the music editor for the Houston Press, Chris Gray, asked me to answer some questions for an article about the State of the Houston Music Scene. Several other heroes of the local community were included resulting in a panel of incredible talent: Quinn Bishop of Cactus Music; Ramon “LP4″ Medina of [...]
How to Book Gigs for your Band: The Phone Call
July 16, 2009 – 11:38 pm
At Bandcamp:BOOKING PARTY we reviewed the process to contact venues and get your band booked. The recommendation was to first do your research on the venue to match up the genre and type of bookings they do. Then you should follow whatever protocol is laid out on the venue’s website. If there are no booking [...]