JH

Whew... gone dark for a while there while I began my journey from "musician-journalist" to "musician-journalist-with-an-economics-degree."  With that in mind, let's pick up with a Christmas tune that's got an economic twist. A live recording from our last (sniff!) Story Slam, at the end of 2007. Three years later, I'm still failing.

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It's back to school time!  Not just for the rest of the world this year, but for me too. Been so busy I haven't posted in a while, but I'm here to keep it alive. This was from a spring 2007 show on education: Schoolhouse Rock meets a truly cynical history of U.S. public schoolin'.  With Robin Johnson in her first-ever performance in the role of "Jimmy," Joe Weismann on various manly voices, and The Smarts backin' me up.  And for those of you viewing this (podcast) post on the web, here's the video, still doing decent traffic on YouTube:

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Went dark for a few weeks here while I dug into my new life as a grad student in economics.  Been taking math and software courses...the semester itself starts after Labor Day.  It's all happened by matters of degrees, but that will put a final cap on the first part of my career -- a decade in public radio.  In honor of that, here's a re-release of the last song I ever did for the show -- meant to catapult myself off into the next thing.  Well, here it comes. And hey, if you're viewing this on the blog, here's the video:

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The video of the live performance on Twin Cities Public Television. (Never know quite what to do with my face during the introduction. Just look contemplatively at the guy talking, I guess.)

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Hold up: Something new? Yes, indeed, it's a brand new song. I had a date with Twin Cities Public Television's "Almanac" to write a song about the week's news, and I was drawn to the latest grim forecasts for the spread of Asian Carp into the Great Lakes.   Decided to model it after a children's song I remembered -- maybe you do too?

Joe from The Smarts joined me on bass.

This is only the song -- I'll post a video of the full segment (including delightful little interview) to the feed shortly.

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Remember when Bill Clinton got those girls out of North Korea, just about one year ago?  That was awesome.

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Surfing for something fun to post today, I smiled listening to this again.  From the nostalgia-shrouded, beautiful, creative days of our live show -- and also the depths of disenchantment with a certain now-ex-president. With the drubbing Obama's getting in his public approval these days, this is a reminder that he has much farther to sink. The magical thing about this recording -- and you can hear it from the audience -- is that this song arose in the midst of a show not about politics, but about whether we're defined by our jobs. They never saw it coming.  Features The Smarts backing me up, of course...and one of my first attempts to play mandolin in front of a crowd of people.

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Six months since the Haiti quake, and the giving has slowed big-time.  Predictably, everyone rushes to give in the early days, then forgets a few months on.  The headlines made me recall this parody celebrity giving song I worked up in the heat of all that. There's nothing funny about Haiti, of course. But it seemed a fine time to send-up the phenomenon of borderline-unintelligible singers.

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Today, it's about to hit 90 degrees and I'm getting a cold. So... why not post a song about a building in the United Arab Emirates (the world's tallest) that was written and recorded on a day when I also happened to have a cold? Brilliant! I love this song because it's got a beautiful error: My first take of the guitar was recorded with the channel open, and feeding back on itself. But I liked the airy sound enough that I just kept it.

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As fanboys and fangals brave heat and pitying looks from the rest of us to line up for hours for the new iPhone, I recalled this dandy little tune.  It feels only slightly dated -- wrote this when Steve Jobs was recovering from his cancer scare, and the tech world was speculating about a post-Jobs-world. In fact, is there even such a thing?

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After his lackluster speech the other night, and the BP thing just getting worse and worse, and the Tea Party ascendant, and the bloom clearly off the rose... it seemed like the right time to bring back this particular tune from the show, from maybe about a year ago.  Obama was everywhere, doing everything -- such ambition. Here's your dose of nostalgia.

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One year ago this weekend, that whole Iranian election thing went down.  It birthed a new freedom movement in Iran. And it also birthed this video, the most-watched NewsTune from In The Loop. That's the power of a special guest.

Say, if you're catching this post on the web, you can use the buttons at right to subscribe to the feed for more thought-provoking stuff every week.

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We're coming up on the one-year anniversary of the...um...less-that-perfect Iranian elections.  In honor/memoriam of the occasion, here is the most-viewed NewsTune I ever did for the show.  (If you missed the video...well, maybe I'll see if I can put that out again as part of this feed, too.)

This also, by the way, marks one year of not being sued by Jim Henson Productions.  Let's hear it for the First Amendment and the Supreme Court's ironclad protection of satire.

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Today,  in honor the one-year anniversary of GM's bankruptcy, a re-release of my update of this Depression-era tune.  I wrote it for the auto-industry, looking all hapless before Congress around that time.  And I sang it like...I don't know what.  Some kind of creepy vaudeville dude, I guess.  Features, appropriately, a remake of an old instrument called a "tenor lute" (actually just a tenor guitar shaped like a pear, but back in the day I guess they called it a tenor lute).

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Well, the EP tunes have led it off.  And now this feed switches into retro mode for a while. TONS of music from recent years has aired on In The Loop and then disappeared.  I'm going to be re-releasing my favorites -- the stuff that should live on. This one I just love, for reasons I can't quite quantify. I wrote it for the yay-hoo who swam to Aung San Suu Kyi's compound.  Features guitar, mando, and a tiny Chinese-made toy accordion that has came in very handy.

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