John Schaefer

I happened to be watching the movie version of West Side Story a few weeks ago, marveling yet again at the music (everyone has their own favorite moments - mine are "America" and "Tonight") and the timeless nature of its Romeo And Juliet story. That timeless aspect makes ...

I'm afraid that words like "mentor" and "protege" have been ruined for me by the film All About Eve. I know on a purely objective level that mentors and proteges are supposed to have a purely professional relationship that is mutually beneficial, but the cynic in me is always ...

I really felt for Barack Obama when he became president, and found that he was not going to be allowed to use his BlackBerry handheld device because of security concerns. While it's turned out that he can actually use the gadget for some communications, his initial distress was something I ...

Music can reach us emotionally in ways that we don't fully understand but can definitely feel; so, it has often been used to deliver a message. In America in the 60s, one song might essentially say, "get us out of Vietnam now," while another might carry the message, "my country, ...

So our weekly series of music inspired by the Seven Deadly Sins now brings us to wrath. One of the great things about this series has been to show that art can be art even when its intentions are not to express humanity's noblest aspirations and emotions. Some great ...

As a kid, I thought Louis Armstrong was hopelessly old-fashioned. Because of course all I knew were songs like "Hello Dolly," which were hopelessly old-fashioned. I knew nothing of the critical role he played in the development of jazz, or his complex and sometimes dark relationships with women, racism, and ...

David Byrne has been one of my very favorite musicians for a long time. One of the reasons he has remained a favorite is because he has never rested on his back catalogue. His career has been full of ...

Bands like the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers basically set the standard for what we now call "jam bands" - groups that tour a lot, that have extended periods of improvisation in each song (the jam), and that have built up a rabid group of followers who form a ...

There are so many ways that Barack Obama has made history that it almost seems silly to point to another one, but just look at how much music and art has been directly inspired by him, both during the campaign and in the wake of his election to the Presidency. ...

Every day I write stuff on the Soundcheck blog, usually because I’ve thought a bit about the subject of the show. Today I just didn’t feel like it. It’s not that I’m lazy, or slothful. It’s not because I haven’t thought long and hard about today’s program. I have. Quite ...

Daniel Handler has sold over 55 million books, mostly under his pen name Lemony Snicket, so it's not the like the guy needs to take on side jobs. But he does.
First, it was the songs written with Stephin Merritt (of the band Magnetic Fields, and others) for ...

Making fun of the French has become almost a national pastime. (Saturday Night Live in 1989: this week the Berlin Wall fell and East and West Germany were reunited. In a related story, France offered to surrender.) It's really not fair, but let's face it, sometimes the French just make ...

Rock needs U2. Rock music has always been about larger than life characters, big sounds, over the top emotion and drama (on stage and off) - everything writ large, on an arena-sized scale. And the iconic rock acts have ...

Last summer, I began working on a documentary film about an Iranian mystic and musician named Ostad Elahi. A number of neuroscientists have taken note of Elahi's music and the way he intended it to act upon a person's state of consciousness, and it seems that this man's mystical ...

Philosophers, spiritual leaders, and economists can all debate the topic of "greed" - is it the root of all sins, as St. Paul once wrote, or is it simply a form of self-interest, and therefore a part of our biological imperative to self-preservation? What's wrong with wanting it all, and ...

When ABBA sang "Take A Chance On Me," it was clearly a piece of light, romantic fluff. Today, it's a business proposition. As musicians look for new business models (you might've heard rumors that the old business model ain't working so well anymore), some are going straight to the fans ...

The story of Chris Brown's alleged assault of a woman -- a woman that many believe to be his girlfriend, the the even more popular singer Rihanna -- may be news, but it's not new. Sadly, musicians are as prone to domestic abuse as anyone else. James Brown's treatment of ...

The American Music Center's survey of composers is a typical good news/bad news affair. Most composers described themselves as working more now than ever before, yet the average income is only $45,000 - which might not be too bad in lots of places, but for the composers concentrated in ...

Last week, we started our series on the Seven Deadly Sins in music with the #1 sin on the sin charts: Lust. That was an easy one - it's hard to imagine any body of songs in any style that doesn't contain a few songs, at least, about gettin' ...