Live from the CMJ Music Marathon

I was lucky enough to score an all-access press pass to the 28th annual CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival this week, and I'll be liveblogging for Blast. Check the homepage for updates.

Never Too Young

Sometimes there's nothing like hearing about other people's struggles to make you realize how insignificant your own problems are.

So it was quite the wake-up call/reality check/whatever cliche you want to call it when I reunited with a good friend from college earlier this year only to find out that, in the time since we had last seen each other, she had been diagnosed with and survived cancer.

Here's a small plug for a piece she wrote about how the shortcomings of our current health care system only compounded her ordeal.

Blast update

In the October issue of Blast I have pieces on Totally Michael, Dragonette and Land of Talk.


In other news ...

Highlights of this past weekend included my first time seeing Madonna, at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, which was truly mind-blowing. I wish I had a tenth of her physical stamina. Among other things, the performance reinforced my belief that "Like a Prayer" is the greatest pop song ever written. By the time the show ended, it seemed like most of the audience members (myself included) had forgotten that the time Madge kept us waiting for her to come on (nearly two hours late) was about equal to the length of the concert itself.

Lowlights included the New York Magazine 40th Anniversary Party at Hammerstein Ballroom, where a typical stellar live performance by The National was preceded by an excrutiatingly un-funny performance by comedy troupe Stella - which was particularly disappointing for me since I'm a huge Michael Ian Black fan. Seriously, their jokes felt like they were tied to lead balloons.