jake zavracky

Hey all you cool cats and kittens. In all great likelihood, most of us will remember what we were doing the week ending April 10th, 2020. Or, perhaps more accurately, what we weren't doing. These are strange times. But, if you're like me, which hopefully you aren't, you might be surprised to find out that there still exists a Billboard chart of the top songs in the nation, and so we therefore have no choice but to return to the important task of over-analyzing it. We can't let the coronavirus win. Before we get started though, a shameless plug: my band The Dream Eaters, due in large part to the recent upending of the entire world, have delayed releasing the video for our song "Crucifix (2020 mix)", and there are many amongst our several fans who consider this to be, possibly, the most devastating side effect of the whole pandemic. It is either the worst time to finally release a song in which the lyric "hangin' out alone" is repeated 20 time

Purple Rain, the film, is now streaming on Netflix, and so for no reason at all, here is an unnecessarily exhaustive critical companion. I know you probably don't need me to tell you that Purple Rain is flawed but let's look at it together shall we? If you're a Prince fanatic, please feel free to let me know if I've gotten anything wrong. This film was the first directed by Albert Magnoli, Prince's manager, and despite the fact that as a director he clearly has no idea what he's doing in most departments, the film has a really great look to it, sometimes grainy, very raw looking: not the kind of slick treatment you would expect for this type of film. This is in all great likelihood likely the result of the expertise of director of photography Donald Thorin, given the rest of the their bodies of work up to this point. In any case, I would guess that a great deal of what's presented in Purple Rain came directly from Prince's own vision and that the s

Who will it be? Which person soon to cross your path will sneeze in your direction, and thus, like Death himself, touch you with a bony finger? Coronavirus is going to get you, and you are going to get it. It will probably kill you. Be afraid. How will you spend your last days on Earth? Over here, we're talking about the hits! We're studying pop music going back 50 years here, starting with this week's top ten chart from the Billboard Hot 100 and working our way backward through the charts from this week in 2010, 2000, 1990, 1980, and 1970, analyzing each separately. My special guest this week is an amazing singer, my bff and former bandmate: Amanda Khiri! She performs regularly at the legendary 55 Bar in the West Village and she also sang with our pal Ahmed Gallab, aka Sinkane, in his band, touring the world and slaying audiences. Prior to that she'd been slaying audiences on a significantly smaller scale in our band Z&A , which I still think was criminally u

We're studying pop music going back 50 years here, starting with this week's top ten chart from the Billboard Hot 100 and working our way backward through the charts from this week in 2010, 2000, 1990, 1980, and 1970, analyzing each separately. My special guest this week is a guy I love talking about music with, Dan Kramer. Dan is an absurdly talented bass player, pianist, songwriter, producer and arranger but more importantly he's a great dude. If you've watched TV in the past 10 years you've probably heard his music without realizing it from his work at his production house Skillman Labs . He and Ernest "Ernie" D'Amaso started the Motown influenced band Ernest Ernie and the Sincerities and released two albums, and he also fronts a Thin Lizzy tribute band, Thin Timmy, utilizing his spot on imitation of Phil Lynott. A quick note: as I mentioned last week the Dream Eaters have a new album out now that you can buy on Bandcamp, and I also mentione

We're studying pop music going back 50 years here, starting with this week's top ten chart from the Billboard Hot 100 and working our way backward through the charts from this week in 2010, 2000, 1990, 1980, and 1970, analyzing each separately. This week my guest is one of my all time besties Elizabeth LeBaron. For 3 years now we have traveled all over this side of the Mississippi playing for anyone that will listen to our band the Dream Eaters. Elizabeth is an amazingly talented musician with a beautiful voice and boundless enthusiasm. She learns her parts at blinding speed, almost in real time. She is a joy to be around, she's a ray of sunshine, unless it's before 1PM. Speaking of the Dream Eaters, we have a "new" album coming out, a compilation of our music from 2015-2020, called, aptly, "2015-2020". Of it we are extremely proud. There's plenty of actual new content and remixes, plus our favorites from our albums, and from our EPs when we