Author Archives: Alfred Lee

The latest copy of Q Magazine promises to clue me in on “Every album & track you’ll ever need!” for my ultimate music collection. Flipping through, I managed to find something really interesting and informative, but it has nothing to do with any of their expert picks ““ especially not the inexplicable choice of 2Pac’s […]

“So, what do you listen to?” It’s the getting-to-know-you music fan equivalent of asking students their majors. With just a few words, your new friend’s genre(s) of choice lets you mentally file away his or her entire existence into a neat little category. It’s generalizing, unfair and entirely useless, but we all do it anyway, […]

So I’m taking it easy, thoroughly enjoying my pre-dinner snack of orange pineapple juice and a Ziploc bag full of jelly beans, when my playlist jumps to A Tribe Called Quest’s “If the Papes Come.” As is always the case with Tribe, I immediately feel a good deal cooler than I have any right to. […]

It’s almost dark out, and Professor Li Chi drifts around a packed Gamelan Room, instructing restless students in the uses of the oddly shaped instruments they fumble with. Many struggle to even play a scale on what look like the Eastern cousins of more familiar banjos, fiddles and flutes. One nervously plucks away at what […]

Not too long ago, I surprised myself by telling a girl I liked her. She was a young woman I hardly knew, but in the embarrassing instant the words flew out of my mouth, I suddenly had never been so sure of anything in the world. This was great, but the problem was that the […]

Keeping up with the latest music news these days is such a drag. There’s the newly brewing rap beef, pitting practically everyone against everyone, pro-wrestling style. It’s getting ugly: Rappers are publicly airing things out, people are getting shot and Al Sharpton is talking about radio bans. There’s also the Lil’ Kim trial, and Ja […]

I’ve been called a lot of things over the years, but the new name coming from friends these days is “elitist.” It’s never in so many words, but the image that’s more or less conjured up is that of Diane Keaton in “Manhattan,” when she’s babbling on about her “Academy of the Overrated,” slamming geniuses […]