Notes from a Genius

This weekend, Saturday night, I traveled down to Boston for a small indie folk band called Swear and Shake, whom I honestly had not heard too much from, other than a few songs on Spotify. I was really interested in seeing the opening act because it was Jillette Johnson. She's the kind of artist that should be way bigger than she actually is. She had the unfortunate fate of coming out around the same time as Anna Nalick and A Fine Frenzy, both female piano players. In fact, after putting out an album in 2012, she sort of disappeared, had one "hit" song that never really allowed her to see more fame or mainstream attention, even though it's an incredible song (about domestic abuse, nonetheless, so yeah, not much of a popular subject, I guess). Then, a couple years ago, Johnson put out another record, independently. Now, she's been working on an album that's been a labor of love and she's hitting the road with the band Swear and Shake. Her set relied pretty ...

A few weeks back, I got to finally see one of the best, most honest, politically-truthful hip-hop bands of the late '90s-early-00s, Jurassic 5, only to discover they've actually been kicking around the underground scene for about 25 years now- and that's exactly what they're celebrating by going out on this tour now. I remember working at Bull Moose back in 2000 when we received a copy of their 2nd album "Quality Control" and I used to listen to it regularly. They've had a string of albums afterwards, including "Power in Numbers" which I had on repeat. I never forgot about them, but underground hip-hop was never really something I searched for, so it usually wasn't on my radar. With their live performance, you get a lot of interaction with the crowd participating in chorus sing-alongs and each song provides each member an opportunity to drop a few lines/bars and their flows never stop. DJ Cut Chemist and his counterpart DJ Nu-Mark were incre...