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I talk for more than an hour with Patrick Tape Fleming. Patrick is a musician, producer & recording engineer. He's cofounder of the bands Gloom Balloon & The Poison Control Center. His music has been featured in several industry publications, including Rolling Stone, Spin & Billboard. He's produced over 40 albums. Patrick also produced the Olivia Tremor Control documentary, The Realized Film: Dusk at Cubist Castle, celebrating the 25th anniversary of that band's debut album.

For more on Patrick, go here:

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You know the feeling when you’re listening to a song for the first time and it gets to a place - a climax, a drop after a breakdown, a soaring melody, shining harmonies, or a beat that you can’t ignore - that makes your body respond? You might feel butterflies or goosebumps or the need to move. It might stop you from breathing for a second, or compel you to sing along or shout or scream uncontrollably. You might cry, or laugh in utter surprise. You forget everything but the moment you’re in. Whatever it is, it’s as if the song is inside you, flowing with your blood, leaping with your synapses, and you can’t stop your reaction even if you wanted to.

The next time you hear the song, you know that moment is coming. The anticipation sends tingles of electricity through you, which builds in intensity until the moment hits and you explode. It’s even stronger than the first time. You know from then on you can count on that song to wipe out any other thought or feeling, and transport you to transcendent bliss.

After a while, that feeling diminishes. Maybe you’ve heard the song too many times, or too often in a short span. Or maybe it’s just that you know it so well that the feeling is more a memory than a full on rush. You’ll always love the song, but it won’t ever have the same effect on you.

Or will it? Think of that song again. Now imagine you’re talking to someone who it turns out has the same musical taste as you. You find out they’ve never heard the song, and your breath stops for a second and so does time. The only thing you can do next is play that song for them. You imagine being in their place - totally unaware of what’s about to happen. They can feel your excitement, hear it in your voice. So they’re prone to experiencing the song with open ears and an open heart. And you’re prone to hearing it the way they will hear it - for the first time.

The moment comes, and because you’re hearing the song through their ears, something amazing happens. That overwhelming feeling you thought would never return comes back stronger than ever. It may as well be your first time too. Your friend is right there too, and both of your feelings converge and grow into something bigger than any individual feeling could ever be. It makes you want to share this song with every other likeminded person, so you can spread the joy and feel it all over again yourself.

I call this feeling the “share tingles”, and it happens all the time. It’s what gives music near eternal life. Self-replenishing power. Those mega impact moments in a song or any great work pass on their feelings through everyone who hears them, and the power is multiplied exponentially. You don’t even need to know the person. You could even be in a crowd of strangers. Just being with others who are feeling what you are reawakens everything you ever felt. It’s why even though live music is rarely sonically better than recorded music, the experience of it can be far superior. It’s why great DJs are shamans. It’s why radio still exists....

Listen to hear the rest of this essay, and stay through the end to hear the featured song:

NICK – “Your Sweetness” (from the album, Your EP)

And check out this one too:

REC - "Break You" (from the album Parts and Labour)

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Here's my interview with Paul Leschen. Paul is a musician, composer, piano karaoke expert, and founder of the song series Leschen Sessions & the band Kingship. He has cowritten and staged several musicals, among many other accomplishments.  

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Everything in this country – and possibly the whole world – needs to be a competition. Think of growing number of TV shows that pit people’s talents against each other. The Voice, America’s Got Talent, etc. etc. Or hell, think of any entertainment awards show. The conventional wisdom is that conflict makes for a good story. And if you create conflict where none exists, then you’ve REALLY won the game.

I did a podcast already on bogus music rivalries, so I won’t go into it too much here, except to say that just about 100% of the time we are forced to compare apples with oranges. We follow the lead of false conflict creators and actively look for similarities and comparisons so we can decide which one is better, even though most commonalities are surface at best.

Take this week’s case: the so-called contest between Billy Joel & Elton John, two singer/songwriter/piano players who happened to become famous around the same time. If you know enough about both of them, the first thing that comes to mind is how different they are. Background, overall sound, vocals, songwriting template, creation process, career trajectory, personal life & even piano playing – they only crossed over every so often. Most of the time, ALL of those elements were glaringly different.

We all know our judgments are highly subjective, and that they both excelled at what they did. But we need to pick a favorite and justify that pick by saying that person is better. So we twist ourselves up to turn coincidence into sameness, and then tear apart one of them to make our pick look even better.

I grew up with both, love & respect both, played covers from both, did recent chronolographies for both, read bios & reviews of both, and have three takeaways:

1. Billy Joel is to the Beatles as Elton John is to the Stones. There are parallels for almost every quality listed two paragraphs above – songwriting, trajectory, etc.

2. My favorite will always be Billy Joel. It also happens that my favorite from #1 is the Beatles. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I contend that if you are more a Beatles than Stones fan, you are more likely to favor Billy Joel.

3. There are almost no critics who favor Billy Joel.

It’s mind boggling how great the disparity in praise, accolades, good reviews & overall respect is between these guys. They both deserve it all. They’re both geniuses & legends. So why is it that, for example, Rolling Stone has been way more solicitous to Elton than to Billy? Why do more of Elton’s songs end up on best-of lists? Is it that Billy Joel has always been more direct and open-faced with his intentions, and Elton John had a more winding path – i.e. Billy is no bullshit pop/rock and Elton is artsy rock/pop? There are too many caveats to both for that to be true, yet I suspect that’s a big part of it.

As a singer/songwriter, I very much lean toward Billy Joel’s style. Yet as a piano player I’m MUCH more similar to what Elton does. As a producer, I’ve incorporated elements of both. There’s no question that Billy Joel has influenced me much more than Elton John, right down to even some of his word pronunciations and the directness of his lyrics – often about relationship issues. Here are two I’ve been dying to feature, an “intro” song that transitions into one of my early hit singles, the title track of my album, What It Is:

NICK – “10 Shun”

NICK – “What It Is”

Who is your favorite? Why do you think critics tend to favor Elton John, and do you agree or disagree? Discuss dammit!

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Here's my interview with David Dabbon. David is a veteran composer, songwriter, arranger, & orchestrator. He was also the Dance Music Arranger for Beetlejuice on Broadway, and an Emmy nominee for Outstanding Music & Lyrics for "Eat Shit Bob" on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. 

For more on David, and to check out his awesome food blog, go here:

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FEATURED SONG: NICK – “Xylophone Ways” (from the album Your EP)

The voice is it for me. When it comes to any popular music, it’s the lead singer who makes or breaks it. The absolute best band or music powered by a vocalist I don’t click with may as well be telephone hold music.

Two perfect examples: Some people can’t stand the Cure because Robert Smith’s voice grates on them. I happen to love them in large part BECAUSE of his voice. Some people find Billie Eilish’s music haunting, intimate & enchanting. Her songs are so well done & her voice is wonderful, but it doesn’t move me at all.

Which brings us to Soundgarden. They were many things - grunge metal punk progressive psychedelic classic rock pop. They were incredible for many reasons - songwriting, the above mix of styles, live performance, and Kim Thayil’s genius. But to me they were legendary because of Chris Cornell. No voice in the last 40 years has come close to being as epically powerful, yet nuanced & beautiful, as his.

I call Soundgarden’s music modern opera because it’s what opera should be. What it’s meant to be. Wrung with emotion, running the full dynamic spectrum, technically sound yet not confined by rules. Cornell was able to convey complete abandon and total control all at once - over a vocal range and intricacy of melody that would confound, or worse constrict, even the best opera singers.

You could feel the angst and the vulnerability equally. The struggle and the triumph. The weakness and the strength to endure. Which is what we all thought was happening until 2017. You could say Kurt Cobain’s death was a shock. Or Layne Staley. Jim Morrison or Janis Joplin. But what they all had in common was that A. They were relatively young; and B. They were still in the heat of their worst addictions, recoveries notwithstanding. Cornell’s death was much more of a shock because we all thought he was out of the woods. Like Philip Seymour Hoffman, we all thought he’d exorcised his demons and found a stable path forward. We thought we’d see him age into one of the great modern elder statesmen.

Nope. He’s dead. And it sucks. Mostly for him & his family & friends. Also for his band. His fans. And all of music. I can’t say there will never be a voice of his caliber again, but we will never get to hear HIS voice again. Whether in Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog, Audioslave or his solo work, he left us with a tortured beauty both rawer and more polished than Led Zeppelin. And deeper than any metal predecessors who influenced him.

As for Soundgarden’s influence on me, it may not be readily evident. But it’s there. All the vocal expression. All the power & complexity of the music. The bluntly poetic lyrics. This is kind of a left field pick, but if you focus in on the lyrics, the emotion & especially the chorus & solo sections, you’ll hear the connection:

NICK – “Xylophone Ways” (from the album Your EP)

Also, as part of my acoustic tribute to grunge, I covered their song “Fell on Black Days”. I’m including it here as a bonus:

Nick DeMatteo – “Fell on Black Days” (live acoustic performance)

Do you know Soundgarden’s music? We’re you a fan? Did Chris Cornell’s voice captivate you the way it did me? What other bands do you love because of the lead vocalist? Discuss dammit!

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Here's my interview with Leslie Goshko - comedian, musician, writer & host/creator of Sideshow Goshko Storytelling Series.  

For more on Leslie, go here: 

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There’s nothing that gets me going like a good Housemartins song. When you hear one of their mega hits on the radio, it takes you back to a time when…

Okay you get it. Practically no one has heard of the Housemartins, the 1980s British jangle pop band whose biggest hit was an a cappella cover of the Isley, Jasper, Isley song “Caravan of Love”. If you were into the Smiths, you should go check them out.

And while you’re listening, keep in mind that their bass player was Norman Cook. Another forgotten name, right? Sure, except that in 1996 he adopted the stage name Fatboy Slim and helped to change the face of dance music.

Like so many successful DJs, his roots were in music other than dance. In Cook’s case, punk & the aforementioned jangle pop. Throughout all that he was DJing – often as DJ Quentox, but it didn’t come to the forefront for him until the late 1980s when he formed the loose collective Beats International. This was back when sampling was becoming huge, but before any laws were passed to regulate it.

Naturally, sampling lawsuits were becoming huge too. And one hit Cook so hard he had to pivot, which in turn helped to infuse his music with even more original ideas & exploration beyond the recontextualizing of sampling & remixing he had mostly been doing. During this time, he worked under the band names Freak Power, Pizzaman & the Mighty Dub Katz, before finally settling on Fatboy Slim, a name he says is “goofy & ironic” like much of his music.

As Fatboy Slim, he blew up, particularly his second album, 1998’s You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby. With “Right Here, Right Now”, “The Rockafeller Skank” & “Praise You”, he broke through internationally and never looked back. Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars continued the success, particularly with “Weapon of Choice” & that awesome Christopher Walken video.

Since then Cook kept at it in various ways, as Fatboy Slim, the Brighton Port Authority, again as Mighty Dub Katz, and doing remixes for all kinds of artists including Cornershop, A Tribe Called Quest & the Beastie Boys. No matter what Cook does, he’s always exploring & expanding, never settling for rote dance music of ANY kind. He always infuses his music with a variety of sources – samples, funk, electronica, rock, glitch, world, ambient, spoken word – and structures his songs like SONGS and not just seven minutes of danceable music.

He’s a DJ. An artist. A musician. And to some that’s controversial. I’ve been a DJ off & on since I was a pre-teen. Even back then I understood that there are many kinds of DJs & many ways TO DJ. Play only the hits. Play the hits but throw in some surprises. Play obscure tunes altogether. Play a mix of genres or play all one kind of music. Play stand-alone songs, or crossfade & beat match. Create remixes of existing songs as new styles. Create entirely new mixes & remixes, both as recordings and completely on the spot live.

LISTEN TO HEAR MY DISCUSSION OF THE EXCELLENT BOOK ON THE HISTORY OF DJs & DJing, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.

REC - “The Power of Repetition (Everlasting)” (from the album Syncopy for the Weird)

REC - “If It Feels All Right” (from the album Parts and Labour)

Discuss dammit!

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In this interview edition, Nicky DeMatteo returns to answer your questions & mine.  

For more on Nicky, go here: https://nickydematteo.bandcamp.com/

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In a STUNNING reversal, interviewer becomes interviewee, thanks to the charming & insightful conversational talents of Cathryn Lynne.  

This here's a talk in wherewhich Cathryn asks Nick a bunch of questions, and they keep jawing until you want more more more.  

For more on Nick, go here:

And you can find Nick and his band REC's music EVERYWHERE. Search for these albums:

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