[As a postscript to “Pandora’s Music Box,” let me add this lovely imaginary instrument from Boris Vian.  It appears in his novel L’écume des jours (The Scum of the Days).  A number of artists have built plausible models of the Pianocktail; documentation can be found, here and there, on YouTube.  But let me translate the […]

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The Ullage Group’s sixth public outing attracted our largest turnout yet.  We ran out of chairs and pews; some had to stand, fidgeting. After an introductory sermonette, Lisa uncorked the ullage, and poured out the traditional offering to our hosts at the Jalopy Theater, Geoff and Lynette Wiley.  She then discussed the cultural history of […]

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For your listening pleasure, the Ullage Group returns this coming Sunday, January 24th with a cacophonous and fun-filled afternoon of unusual, under-appreciated, forgotten, and one-of-a-kind musical instruments. Part show-and-tell, part performance, all noise! Your ears will never be the same again. Doug Skinner will discuss and demonstrate some of the patent instruments and “gizmo harps” […]

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A holiday weekend marred by beautiful autumn weather and massive transit disruptions didn’t keep the curious from turning out for the Ullage Group’s presentation, “Straight Talk About Hoaxes.” Anthony Matt’s multimedia exegesis of the 1969 “Paul is Dead” hoax was a rousing success. Original tapes of radio shows and phone calls, furnished by the DJ […]

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We began the year with a crab canon; I had vowed to return to the subject, and here we are. A crab canon is, simply, a palindromic canon.  Or, to put it differently, a tune that harmonizes with itself backwards.  They’re not necessarily hard to write: you just start from both ends, and meet in […]

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Happy New Year.  It’s cold here.  We offer you a round to sing as you shiver. Here is old man Janus, the double-faced gatekeeper, gazing in the mirror and realizing how much colder he’s grown.  Given the subject, I’ve set it as a crab canon (that is, palindromic) — except for that flickering between F […]

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Henri Salvador, the great Guyanese singer/songwriter, died this year (back in February), and we never marked his passing here.  I wanted to salute him, briefly, before this dismal year evaporated for good. He had a long and active career in Europe and South America, but never crossed that baffling cultural divide to win much of an […]

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(I delivered something like the following at an event called “Bigfoot Night,” curated by Kevin Maher and Meg Sweeney Lawless, at the Sci Fi Screening Room in NYC, 11/17/08.)

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Yes, it’s an election year; and no, I won’t add to the punditry.  It’s not that I have nothing to say on the subject, but this site is devoted to the other part, and that’s what I’ll stick to. I would like to mention, however, that religion is playing an ever larger part in US politics.  […]

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The idea is a simple one: if you have trouble learning the notes on your ukulele, simply paste this chart onto the fingerboard. As someone who has played and taught uke for many years, however, I’d like to point out that this is not a good idea.  First of all, you don’t really want to play while […]

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