Cherub Rock — The Smashing Pumpkins
I’d only ever heard cassettes. I slid *Siamese Dream* into my first CD boombox—no clue what the band had survived to make it—and *Cherub Rock* hit like color after black and white.…
Black Hole Sun — Soundgarden
Imagine you’re the frontman of a Seattle grunge band in 1993—you’ve finished three studio albums and you’re deep in a fourth. Your producer challenges you to write with more integrity instead of courting what you think fans want. On the drive home, a song starts to assemble in your head, and a stray line from the radio becomes “Black Hole Sun.”…
Tomorrow — Silverchair
In 1994, three teenagers in Australia, between the ages of 14 and 15, submitted their demo tape with two songs to a demo contest held nationally. One was called Tomorrow; the band was still Innocent Criminals. Tomorrow won, Triple J and a record deal followed, Silverchair finished Frogstomp—and when the single hit the US charts in 1995, that was when Tomorrow found me.…
Phoebe Bridgers @ Red Rocks
Red Rocks lived up to every photo, but the emotional core was hearing Phoebe Bridgers perform “Halloween” after it had already soundtracked our break with Iowa—proof-of-life for a move we’d rushed to make.…
Skate City Des Moines
Des Moines opened what was then America’s largest skatepark and landed the Dew Tour—four days of Olympic-qualifying skating where the point felt less like scores than shared progression in the sport.…
Here In Kansas
Second annual solo writing week, this time in a Kansas tiny-house with a creek under the porch: Song Exploder on the drive up, a fox-eared host, and a new song built from listening to spring like a record.…
My Friend Firefox
Your browser is closer to a hired guide than a dumb window—so who funds the map? A tour of vendor incentives (Google ads, Apple hardware, Microsoft Windows) and why I still ride with Mozilla.…
The Misinformation Age
2020 reminded us how fast bad information rots institutions; this is a pragmatic toolkit—notice your biases, map where your outlets sit on Ad Fontes, quit the aggregation apps, and starve the intermediaries.…
America 2020
On Election Day 2020 I rewrote Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” verse by verse—the same road-trip frame, a much darker 2020 mirror—after reading Daniel Levitin on songs that force us to humanize instead of demonize.…
Project Leroy - Lessons Learned Part 3
Three camera enclosures for a backyard AI rig: fragile bare module, wobbly printable arm, then a proper housing with tripod legs that finally survived kids, pets, and Minnesota weather.…