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77 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.09.09)”
To yesterday’s music conversation: I wouldn’t trade today for anything. Yes, the 70s were great, I loved the 90s (my own heyday…not sure how to spell that, actually), the 60s may have been the best… But today I have access to all the music from around the world, and a lot of it is fantastic. And the old stuff is still there for you. Hard to understand how anyone could complain unless they just aren’t curious.
If you want easy access to a sampling of what’s happening, I’ve found the Tiny Desk series on NPR consistently good. And JK’s recs, of course.
starters: brunson (34) bridges (32) anunoby (32) towns (33) robinson (24)
dynamic bench: hart (23) mcbride (21) clarkson (16) yabusele (15) hukporti (6) dadiet (4)
the rest: mccullar kolek beauchamp diawara
pg: brunson 34, mcbride 14
sg: bridges 22, clarkson 16, mcbride 7, dadiet 3
sf: anunoby 23, hart 14, bridges 10, dadiet 1
pf: towns 17, yabusele 13, hart 9, anunoby 9
c: robinson 24, towns 16, hukporti 6, yabusele 2
have two of anunoby robinson mcbride on the floor at all times except for of course blowout minutes thats where mccullar kolek beauchamp diawara come into play
Agree with Rama, lots of great music coming out. My favorites from the last 2 years:
Bug Club (if you like Fountains of Wayne) – tongue in cheek lyrics, inde-pop, really catchy duo from Wales. “Very Human Features” is easily the album of 2025.
Dead Pioneers (if you like Dead Kennedys/Crass/Public Enemy) – politically charged talk-punk.
Cheekface (if you like They Might Be Giants) – the 2000s most fun quirky indie band.
Fontaines DC (U2) – Ireland has the best rock band in the world again.
Skegss (Nirvana) – post-punk, but not just a empty description. They’re like if Cobain took his happy meds & just wanted to surf & drink with friends.
Bodega (Jim Carroll Band? Le Tigre?) – I don’t have a good comparison for this band. Talk-sing-indie, I guess?
Amyl & the Sniffers (Sex Pistols) – Pure punk with tons of energy.
I also highly recommend Bagel Radio if you want to find new music. I put a link in the menu. They do live hosted shows on Friday 9-5, which repeats on Saturday as well. There’s a “Fuzzy” radio show on Tuesdays as well, for you distortion loving folks.
The problem with modern music isn’t that it’s worse in some way than previous decades; it’s that in a lot of ways it’s harder to find new music. Music stores basically don’t exist anymore. MTV and the other music TV stations haven’t played music videos in years. Radio has been totally taken over by corporations to the point that basically 75% of all music radio stations only play top 40 pop/rock and the other 25% is mostly country radio and the occasional hiphop station. Theoretically, the internet makes it easier to find music but in my experience you have to already know what you’re looking for; the algorithms on the various streaming services are fucking terrible.
Love Amyl & The Sniffers – I saw them a few years ago at Iceland Airwaves. If you love new music and discovering new bands, go to the Iceland Airwaves festival. They get a lot of new bands and a lot of european bands you may not get to see in the states.
Some new bands I like – Nation of Language (think New Order/joy division, the cure, etc) – they’re a brooklyn based band.
Porridge Radio, Automatic, Horsegirl
I switched over to apple music from spotify a few years ago and like it so much more than spotify. Sound quality is better and they make good recommendations too.
I need to subscribe to Spotify for work reasons, but for my own personal listening I use Apple Music. When I have to listen to something shitty that I don’t care about I use Spotify, because I don’t want it to screw up my curated Apple algorithm of the things I actually DO like.
This paragraph feels micro targeted to me (FoW is my favorite band after Bruce and E Street), and I’ve never heard of Bug Club before. Thanks, Mike!
I like the apple music “Inspired By” playlists. I find that’s a good way to discover newer music. Go to one of your favorite older bands and if they were big at all, apple music will usually have that inspired by playlist that has newer bands influenced by them.
And their discover radio feature is pretty good too.
there is neuroscience behind thinking all old music is better. Our brains were more malleable when we were teenagers and young adults. And that’s also a time in people’s lives when core memories and friendships are formed. So the music from our youth will always hit us differently because those songs have carved pathways in our brain. Have you ever noticed that a song you hated as a teenager you now think “hey, that songs pretty good?” It’s because whether you liked it or not, you heard it when you were young and so it’s carved into your brain.
Newer music when you’re in your 30’s, 40’s or older isn’t going to hit you the same way. But it’s actually important to listen to it because it creates new pathways in your brain. Similar to learning a new language when you’re older. It’s actually good for your brain.
Part of my thing with feeling more married to older music is that I came of age just before hip-hop really exploded. I had a couple of Run-DMC albums, but that was it. Hip-hop has become not only the dominant force in music but the area where it feels like the biggest innovations have happened, but it’s never quite felt like “my” music, if that makes sense. So I gravitate either towards the stuff I listened to as a kid/teen, or modern stuff that resembles it — the latter of which becomes more and more niche.
Nope
Rama, you are lying.
My feelings about both disco and boy bands have evolved wildly over the years. Now, I get pumped if “I Want It That Way” comes on the radio.
Of course part of that is cultural; some of us hated certain musical genres (e.g., disco, boy bands) because we didn’t want to be lumped in with the apparent pinheads who loved them. As we’ve aged those groups dissipated, and some of us have come to appreciate the niche that these genres represent (e.g., dancing around the house while cooking or cleaning…).
dancing around the house while cooking or cleaning is definitely not happening
Lol, not really. I don’t hate some things as much as I did, but a lot of 80s music really sucked, and when I hear it now, it still sucks. Duran Duran makes me no happier today than it did then. The Human League can still go suck it.
There are a few bands/songs I don’t enjoy as much, though, as my horizons have broadened. That’s a bit of a bummer.
It helped that I was a musician and my parents were both musicians. They had excellent taste, by and large, and growing up hearing Atlantic-era Ray Charles and then “Glory of Love” on the radio made it pretty clear where the bar was. Muddy Waters or “Like a Virgin” – tough choice.
I didn’t want to come out yesterday and admit it – but I like pop music…
I do get there is a whole business aspect to the industry that doesn’t really make it an even playing field…
just think there is a genius to creating music with broad appeal…
I made the mistake of playing AC/DC on air during a late night college radio shift in Albany. Boy, did I get shit on the next day. After that, it was all Chisel, Bad Brains, Animals that Swim, Billy Bragg, Shootyz Groove, and Kristin Hersh. Jazz and Blues never elicited the same hatred. Some guys were Woody Herman guys and others were Eric Dolphy guys. Now, I can enjoy the Bee Gees, The Foals, The James Hunter Six and anything else that sounds good.
Rama, I happen to like DD’s ordinary world, but not much else.
Duran Duran is awesome. John Taylor might be one of the best bass players in all of rock and roll.
I’m going to give another shout out here to band that I love, the magnificent unsigned Liquid Mike from the upper peninsula in Michigan. The lead singer/songwriter guy is a mail carrier and they’re completely isolated from the music industry up there in the U.P. but they’re a great little rock band. Fans of Guided by Voices, Sugar, Superdrag and the Hold Steady will love these guys. Catchy songs with fuzzy guitars. New album comes out Friday.
https://youtu.be/38mVkkAWGWk?si=_fxtO-m3-6dW7Xzm
I did enjoy Liquid Mike, JK. One of many great recs here.
If you like DD, good for you. I’m not Doogie – I do not judge what you enjoy (so long as it doesn’t hurt anybody or put bad energy into the world). They just annoy the hell out of me. But I also hate the writing of Jonathan Frazen, and lots of people think he’s great, so whatever. There’s room for everyone; I just don’t need to be in every room.
i feel the exact same way rama to each his own glad you wrote that
I like modern music when I can actually discover it. But my old method of discovery (going out to a NYC venue and hearing something new) is largely unavailable to me now. That’s partially bc I want to go bed by 10pm all the time. But even if that weren’t the case most of the venues I used to enjoy discovering new bands at are either gone or have moved on to hiring DJ’s.
I did discover Grace Bowers at a venue recently, and thought she was great.
There’s even this ridiculous movement going on where venues hire musicians (ones who have bands and can do a live show) to just do a dj set.
I just mixed a record that’s coming out Friday that I’m really proud of by Brooks Nielsen, formerly of The Growlers. I also co-wrote three songs and played a bunch of instruments. This is the first time I’ve gotten hired to mix a record, and it’s something I can see myself doing more of in the future. I’ll link to it when it drops.
Yeah Apple Music has gotten a ton better at recommending over the last year or so, which is nice. I never liked Spotify and am glad people are finally jumping ship.
Have you ever noticed that a song you hated as a teenager you now think “hey, that songs pretty good?”
This makes sense in some ways, particularly regarding how I felt about the stuff my parents liked (Steely Dan, Chicago) that I thought was lame “old person” music when I was 18 but am loving now lol. But yeah, aside from Steely Dan being great songwriters/musicians, clearly they remind me of my childhood.
Similarly, I think people my age just generally get nostalgic for the production methods of the 70s/80s/90s versus the digitally-produced music of today.
But of course there is still good music being made. There’s just so much more that it’s really hard to find a way to make something that actually feels novel. Back in the 70s, you could literally just merge genres like country and rock and blow people’s minds.
I have friends with whole careers like this guy and this guy who are fantastic musicians that just keep putting out strong albums year after year out on the margins. But they aren’t “inventing” country-rock like The Byrds, so it’s impossible to stand out in a sea of artists.
Edit: JK, the Growlers are one of my girlfriend’s favorite bands! We will definitely check it out…
Congrats JK!
Matt Yglesias had a post recently where he basically fessed up that all the music he loved coming out of college like The Strokes, Arcade Fire etc, bands I loved too, wasn’t actually all that great and was basically the product of white college kids getting jobs at Pitchfork and convincing themselves they were the only opinions that mattered and dragging the culture along with them.
Maybe that’s not the best summary but it’s close.
You know what, there is lots of great music, so much you could never experience it all, but I wouldn’t trade the experience of going to see all those bands back in the day, like Hubert, for pretty much anything. It was awesome and live music with people around you, while not everything, is about 75% of the equation.
Of course, I haven’t been to a show in 15 years but that’s my idea of the platonic ideal of music….
The internet has given us access to all the world’s music, which means there’s more good music available now than ever before. Unfortunately, it hasn’t given us a way to sort through it efficiently. The best method is probably finding a podcaster or YouTuber who has a similar taste in music that does spend all their time listening to weird bands that haven’t or won’t hit that mainstream.
The other issue is that people glom onto the music of their generation and, even if they make similar music to that now, there’s not enough fertile ground to make something unique within that specific genre.
Two RFAs down, two to go. What happens now with Kuminga and Grimes?
That’s amazing that he just caved.
The Bulls had the hammer. And maybe Giddey’s agent suspected that the money wouldn’t be that much better if he waited for UFA. The league knows what he is at this point. He’s a useful player, obviously, but a limited one.
I think the era of the “bedroom producer” has been detrimental to music. You see a lot less of young kids getting together in a room playing, slowly improving, doing club shows for friends, and that sort of thing and much more kids making music on their laptops by themselves.
I wish I had that kind of technology when I was younger, but on the other hand I played a lot of music in rehearsal spaces with other people, learned how to listen to other people play and coexist with them. I gained skills that you just don’t gain if you’re not playing with other people.
The Strokes were great in their day because they were good musicians who learned to play together well, who worked it out in a rehearsal space and became this tight economical little ensemble. Where are the Strokes of 2025? They are few and far between.
Changing your brain isn’t always a positive. I’m pretty sure some of the music my girfriend listens to causes neurological disorders. 😉
They are great! 🤘 I am bad indian… 😉
I saw Chicago at SPAC a few weeks ago. There are only a couple of original band members left but also a couple that have been around for awhile. They were sensational. I was pleasantly surprised how good the singing was.
So cool, JK!
The point I was trying to make last night re:Vulfpeck was that Ess listed something like 50 songs and albums from 1974 that he still listens to, 50 years after they were produced. Flash-forward to 2075: how much material from 2024 will still be in rotation? Court and Spark will be preserved as Gershwin was. Will Short n’ Sweet? Will Brat?
The musicianship of a group like Vulfpeck is as good/better than that of any guitar,bass,drums,keys lineups before them… but if they disbanded today, no one would remember them 50 years from now. I’m not sure if that’s an indictment of the band, the industry, or the culture. Literature and cinema are largely in the same boat, I guess.
Yeah, Strat, there are also hundreds of super talented sessions musicians out there today who can replicate any grandfathered band from those eras and make it sounds great. Writing memorable songs though…
These days I spend most weekends in Dutchess County. I like to go to some of the farms and wineries in the area, have a few beers, ciders or glasses of wine and watch the local bands/solo acoustic talent. I’ve seen some excellent guitarists. There IS a thrill in finding someone new that really turns you on.
Agree 1000%.
That’s the thing about what I see on Youtube. Some of the musicianship is off the charts technically proficient, but they don’t get very far without song writing.
I’m sure there was a town crier somewhere in Mühlhausen in 1720 railing on and on about how Bach was destroying Renaissance music, though, so I guess time will tell.
From 2000-2006 I probably discovered 99% of my new music one of three ways:
1. Going out to a random LES venue with no idea what band was playing that night.
2. The soundtrack to Madden or FIFA.
3. The O.C.
There are kinds of two piles of music that “live on” beyond their own shelf lives. There’s the songs that were hits, and tied to the culture, and that have associations with peoples’ memory. So a song like “Brat” will live on in this way. People connected with it, and will remember that they connected with it. People will still listen to it in 30 years. 50 years, maybe that’s questionable. Probably though.
The other pile is the pile of high quality music that goes relatively undiscovered in its time. Artists like Nick Drake, Big Star, Judee Sill, Kevin Ayers… that music is eternal. I suspect that similar underground-ish artists today like say MJ Lenderman or Wet Leg will still be relevant 20-30 years from, while a lot of the K-pop assembly line stuff that’s dominating the charts right now will be largely forgotten.
Thanks for mentioning OC, Hubert. I was about to say that after a certain age, almost all of my music discovery has come from TV and movie soundtracks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1eypolupH0
This is a beautifully written song, performed by soulful musicians and recorded in simple, unadorned fashion. There are rough edges to it and it isn’t sanded to pristine perfection by Pro Tools. Just a meaningful lyric delivered with feeling.
I think some of us old timers miss that human element in music. I know I do. It’s easy these days to make a very slick, professional sounding package with very little experience, and as a result, some of the more foundational skills aren’t as much of a priority. TikTok has just poured gasoline on this. If you’re a young musician these days, there’s a good chance you’re trying to “make it” on TikTok by releasing something that captures eyeballs by sounding good for 30 seconds.
Make your little song on your iPad, do a cute video on TikTok, and there you go, you’re “in the music business” now. The barrier to entry has just gotten way too low.
I listened to our old fave, Stellastarr*, the other day with someone much younger than me and found myself reflexively defending the taste of Young Hubie. “You had to see the bassist, though. She was a 12.”
Some things are even harder than defend. Like I can’t explain Andrew WK now but I swear to god if you went to his show in Mercury Lounge you’d think it was good.
And it goes the other way, too. Gen Z kid will be like “I bet it was awesome to see The Killers back then” and you’re like “actually we all kinda thought they sucked.”
If wish Fiasco or Palomar were playing at Cake Shop tonight 😉
This ties in to the tv/cinema culture, too. My industry associates are talking right now of how Netflix dethroned Disney with KPop Demon Hunters, but, as a parent of consumers, I can tell you that the Disney movies will live for generations, and the Netflix stuff will expire with the Labubus.
Aaron Sorkin’s grandkid?
Edit: Hubert, you should really see what Amanda Tannen is up to these days…
The Algarve is not horrible
cool thing about getting/being old is having the kids turn you on to some good artists they enjoy…
Wonder how does everyone think about AI and it’s effects on not just basketball & sports but society in general.
Every business owner I speak to around NYC has told me they’re stopped hiring several segments of their workforce & my W2 friends telling me they’re basically experiencing the same thing under a different POV.
Funny thing I just thought of while thinking of the songs I discovered from The OC…
The OC introduced Gen X to Placebo’s cover of Running Up That Hill in 2004, and Stranger Things introduced Gen Z to the Kate Bush original in 2022.
I wonder if any other song has had two moments like that.
Side note: the original was a hit in 1985, so if the pattern holds the next generation will be ready for another version around 2039 or so. JK47 might want to add a calendar note for 14 years from now.
The bassist to Stellastar* is the other songwriter/bassist/singer to Cheekface! (Mentioned above.) The two bands couldn’t be more unalike.
If you want to endear yourself to the younger generations, put this song on Karaoke. Everyone will be singing along with you.
Honestly, that’s another issue with finding modern music. A lot of those smaller and mid-sized venues are gone.
I mostly only use it as an advanced search engine. It saves me a ton of research time. But I’ve also used it to solve calculations and create formulas for me.
The problem is that imo it’s still mostly GIGO.
It’s only as accurate as the sources that were used to inform it, meaning that imo it’s potentially very dangerous as a propaganda weapon to minsinform a population.
I’d liken it to mainstream political news on steroids because we’ve gotten to the point where some/much of the population understands the biases of the news they read or see on TV and take it with a grain of salt or search for opposing views. I think most people probably fully trust AI. Yet, I have seen examples of the same BS spins, lies and censoring of certain views I see almost everywhere else because it’s using the very same spinning and lying sources I hate to begin with.
All are in the Bagel Radio playcharts!
There are fewer in Manhattan. A lot more have opened up in Brooklyn.
Here in LA, there are fewer venues than there used to be, and the venues that do exist have bookers that are solely interested in an artist’s social media numbers. This creates a system where bands and artists are incentivized to always be pumping up those social media stats. This leads to some pretty gross behavior all around. I have former friends who I just can’t deal with anymore because of the endless social media engagement attempts.
There’s a venue here called Permanent Records Roadhouse that holds maybe 75 people. Probably less. Friend of mine tried to get a gig there and was turned down because his band had “only” 2000 Instagram followers. That’s like the primary criteria for getting booked even at a tiny podunk venue.
That answered a question I had watching Eurobasket which was “do the Knicks have scouts watching these games?” Answer: they clearly do, which is a good thing. Since there are actually four venues you need a European scouting team of at least four oriole to cover it all and I suspect not all teams make that kind of investment.
my current strategy for postponing watching alien earth has been to get started on the series Fargo…
still early in season 2…recency bias and all – can not remember a show where the casting was more impactful…
it’s literally like the show creators simply chose WHOEVER they wanted to play in those roles…
casting done well usually seems like science/art/opportunity mixed together…so far fargo has been way next level in that regard…
oh yeah, alongside the definition of “dark comedy” should be a pic of someone’s leg poking out of a meat grinder…
A lot of white collar guys better start learning HVAC and plumbing soon.
This sounds like a silly objective. Watch Alien: Earth. Tonight’s episode was a blast.
New avatar, Geo.
EDIT: Crap, that didn’t work.
https://bsky.app/profile/caitlinmaycooper.bsky.social/post/3lyfyj46k522o
glad we have a euro scouting team of four orioles baltimore would be proud
Not only do you gain skills, but it’s where the best stuff happens. When you find that thing with a bunch of other musicians, a sound that’s original, particular to the unique combination of people in a room all literally on the same wavelength – it really is better than sex. That’s what I miss the most.
But it’s also that being part of different groups opens the door to so many cool experiences. I played trombone not particularly well but well enough to be in a symphony that performed in Alice Tully Hall, I have an OK voice but sang well enough that I was in the World Youth Choir and toured Europe and recorded with Benny and Bjorn of Abba as a teenager, I played in jazz bands, started an acapella group in college, finally sang in a rock band that led to some pretty wild experiences… It was such an amazing gift to do music with people, and it made my life so much richer.
And my son, who’s got the same talent and could have gone through the same doors, makes cool music in his room on his computer and has had precisely none of those experiences. It breaks my fucking heart.
It doesn’t even matter if you do it professionally (though it’s awesome when you can, JK) – a lot of the best stuff was pure amateur, stuff that many kids could do. I don’t have an amazing voice, wasn’t a genius on the trombone, yet still ended up with indelible moments across several continents. Alas. Can’t wait till AI takes even composing solo in your room away from kids….
Multiple teens of mine now have played Your Love by The Outfield in the car, and when I’ve sang along they’ve all said “Dad, I didn’t know you were on TikTok!”
goats over sheep all day every day…
saw something about this Greek island where they were just giving them away…
not a bad way to spend the day, good natured animal, walking some beautiful hills…
only thing about animal care though, it’s a 365 day a year thing…takes a lot of commitment…
maybe smarter to find a good spot to make friends with folks already doing that thing, in a stunning location…go hang out with them…and the goats…
remembered you mentioned trail running at some time donnie…
lots of me time, doing a repetitive rhythmic motion thing…
not sure if you remember – knick fan in celtic land (doc bob) focused on endurance competition and training…
lots of alone time…endurance activities like that require a quieter mind…when i first started to change things, thought about the type of mindset that could be able to mentally tune out the world, to a physical and emotional extent as well for an extended period of time…useful thing…
+1. Playing in a (somewhat lame) cover band as a teen for weddings and parties and singing with a large men’s glee club in college were sublime experiences. It’s such a charge to be “inside” the music, even if you’re not very good (as I was not very good).
As parents, we have “forced” our kids to play little house concerts for friends, theirs and ours, since they were toddlers: Cocktails and piano/guitar. They sometimes complain but they’ve fully understood music is a language that anyone can speak if they just spend a little time practicing. And, yes, my twelve year old and I often belt out “I want it That Way” together in the car. Haha.
… you can start at any age.
now you’re making me think it may not be good enough to simply stream it…may need to wait to buy it so only got to take a break when I need or want to…
yeah, that may just be the ticket…
Yeah, geo. You asked a few weeks ago how I get alone time… the answer is running as far up into the mountains as I can or swimming as far out into the ocean as I can. (At least, that was when I lived next to the mountains and the ocean. These days, with my 8 roommates in the two bedroom apartment, I put on my headphones and play my guitar. It’ll do:)