Amphibian Shake
Amphibian Shake – Gunnar Madsen (feat. MCMGM) A Delhi-flavored pumphouse of energy and whooshing soundscapes While the world spins on its axis and we all hold on to keep from being thrown off, I continue …
Push Pull
PUSH PULL – Gunnar Madsen (feat. MCMGM) IDM/EDM YOUTUBE MUSIC VIDEO Life at home… Life is pushing and pulling me in ways I never expected. I’m busy helping my family. My mother is in her …
The Q.T., my front seat at a Hustler Bar
We have a silly little owl from Japan that waves when the sun is shining. He stopped waving some months ago, and this weekend I took time to fix it. A wire was loose, needed …
Guzzette Issue #2019 – All the news from 2019!
HERE’S THE LATEST EMAIL NEWSLETTER FROM GUNNAR Dear Everybody, I get so busy doing cool stuff that I forget to tell you about it 🙂 This is just some of the cool things …
Letter to Oliver Sacks
I’ve long appreciated Oliver Sacks’ work, and was excited when I received his new book, Musicophilia, as a gift shortly after it came out. I eagerly began to read it, but then, only a third …
Gunnar on Desert Island Jazz Friday 9am
“I Am Your Food” caught the ear of Jazzinista host Alisa Clancy at KCSM Jazz 91, and she’s been playing some tracks. She has now invited me to come join her on her Desert …
My neighborhood heroes (firefighters)
I live 3 doors away from Berkeley Fire Engine Co. 6 and the Berkeley training facility for firefighters. For years I’ve enjoyed hearing the yelling of commands, the ratcheting clank of extension ladders, the …
When I was 14
I was 14 when my older sister (17) got a job as a nanny in Wyoming and was gone for the whole summer. Her room in our home in Palo Alto was a 6×6 foot …
Granddaddy was Illegal
During the 60’s we spent every Christmas day at my grandparents’ house in Los Gatos, CA. Cousins from out of town were sometimes there with their moms and dads. It was noisy and fun. When …
Three Beautiful Human Minutes Experiment
This short video (from Denmark) can make us all feel better. Come on, open up, open wide…
My right hand again…
I seem to be finally passing out of stage 1 of the 49 stages of grief, and am getting back to putting dinner on the table in a timely fashion. A couple weeks ago, …
After the election, my right hand speaks
My dad had passed away 2 weeks before, I was still in a fog from that. On Tuesday I was coming down with a cold, by Tuesday night had the shivers, fever. Wednesday morning awoke …
My Country ’tis of They
I feel as if some far-off inheritance that I’d been expecting, but not depending on, has been taken away. You know, some kind of solidity that gives you a sense of security, that allows …
Goodbye, Dad
The Power of a Hat by Gunnar Madsen After a long decline into Alzheimer’s, my dad passed away on Wednesday. Peacefully. As a young man he was incredibly dynamic. In middle to older age he …
Pennies from YouTube Heaven?
When you listen to and download my music directly on this website, I get paid a better percentage from these direct downloads than from anywhere else on the wonderful wide web. But this website serves …
Travels in Japan
I’ve long had a fascination with Japan. My very first tape recorder was from there, as was my first transistor radio. So what? No, for a boy in the early 1960’s obsessed with music …
Spotify – the New Radio?
Radio is not dead – you can still turn it on and listen to a baseball game or NPR or someone yelling at the top of their lungs about how unfair they think life is. …
Dave Werry, Shaggs and Electric Guitars
(The Shaggs open May 12! Click for tix) The first time I ever touched an electric guitar, I was awestruck. I tried plucking a note, tried to make it sing like the Beatles could, but …
Favorite Recordings of 2010
The end of another year approaches. I generally don’t have much time to listen to music, but this year, somehow (was it the ipod I bought and ended up jogging and walking to?) I’ve been …
Listening for Grammys
It’s the nominating season for the Grammy Awards. In the mailboxes of recording academy members like myself, CDs are arriving in droves, hungry to be considered worthy of nomination in their respective categories. (My own …
Bertolt Brecht and Me…
In 1976, at the beginning of my Junior year of college, I was working at a little desk in the basement of the music department, handing out keys to the practice rooms. A professor of …
Edward Albee and I Chat in NY
Edward Albee will moderate while I and all the other creators of dramatic works for Playwrights Horizons will chat. Onstage, with you in the audience tossing questions our way. And we’ll enlighten you about the …
I’m Alive!!!
I’m alive, baby. I’m vibrating at ultra-high frequencies, even. Below are 4 reasons why you haven’t heard from me lately: 1. Rewrite of The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World for another reading at Playwright’s Horizons …
I love the recording studio.
I still feel a thrill every time I’m in a recording studio, with the huge consoles full of buttons, the mics, the speakers, the layers of glass between the control room and the recording space. …
Happy New Year
Here’s a note of thanks for the year just past. Thanks for a son who is insatiably curious and who has a fantastic sense of humor. Thanks for a partner who also has a fantastic …
My Romantic Tendencies
I have always been a closet romantic. I enjoy the sentimental side of things. As a pre-teen, listening to my little panasonic transistor radio every night late into the night, it was almost all love …
Our Amazing Brains (aka My Sony Tape Deck)
When I was 15, a friend and I worked most of the summer painting my family’s house. With the money I earned I bought a reel to reel tape recorder. It was one of my …
Desert Rocks and Gunnar – the Connection?
Rob Jenkins – master of the lens. None of us involved in putting “Two Hands” together can explain why Rob’s photo (of the mysterious rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley) seemed the perfect compliment …
Miles Davis and Gunnar – What’s the connection?
Janet Boye Jenkins is the creator of the glorious design for Two Hands. It is by no means her first CD cover. Straight out of Pratt Institute (where she was my wife’s irrepressible roommate) she …
Embarrassing tales from a piano player
Piano is really my main instrument. I taught myself guitar and piano from the age of 15, and then started classical piano lessons at the age of 17 (practicing 4 hours a day), then went …
Jobs I’ve Had
I find it reassuring when I read of someone successful that I admire, and find that they’ve had a series of ‘normal’ jobs and lived a pretty much ‘normal’ life before they found their success. …
Best $10 I Ever Spent
There are things, little things, little manufactured things, that I am grateful for every day. They are, like, miracles. They make life so much easier. And none of them require you to win the lottery …
Dads in Uniforms
Coming from the library the other day I passed by our local uniform store. Pleated, boring cotton/poly blend workclothes and uniforms were awkwardly displayed behind barred windows. And I suddenly felt comforted. Comforted? I’ve always …
Gout – from an MRI?
A year ago, while I was out jogging, I had a strange episode. Coming to a cross street, I glanced to the right to check for traffic, and just then I lost a piece of …
It’s Good to be the King
I feel like a king. A good king. I had such a royal time recording at Skywalker Sound. When you drive through the gate, your jaw drops at the beauty of the place, the rolling …
1st Concert in 4 years, Piano Fingers on Fire!
I’ve been sequestered, not pestered, alone with me and a piano for weeks now. For a few hours a day at least. Then it’s time to pick up our son from school and do daddy …
The Ultimate Rejection Letter
I used to dream of being on a major label. When I was with The Bobs we dreamed of it, and held out for a few years, waiting for the offer that never came. (That’s …
Performing as Catharsis
I was watching Janis Joplin in “Festival Express” recently. She was cathartic. I don’t think she knew how to hold anything back. Performing for her seemed like an all-or-nothing thing. I was thinking how other …
New Year, New Hope, New Stuff…
I promised in my last blog entry, some time back, that I would be working on new piano instrumental pieces. I have been, eagerly, and I’m very pleased with the results. All I need now …
New Piano Works in the works
A couple of years ago I got a case of pneumonia. NOT the rockin’ pneumonia. Just the too-tired-to-get-outta-bed-and-my-lungs-hurt pneumonia. A shot of rhythm and blues did not, alas, cure it. But as I slowly began …
Tibetan Book of Balding
When you start to go bald, you face yourself squarely. You didn’t cause it, you didn’t earn it. It is not retribution or karma. It is simply destiny rising up in front of you. You …
The thing about Singing Telegrams is…
Okay, so you’ve just graduated with a bachelors degree. You studied music theory and composition. You’ve somehow got to make some money. You’ve got to get a job. You write music for (and direct music …
What is Jazz?
I was in the drugstore a few weeks ago, picking up a prescription. While I was waiting a young pharmacist, a guy in his early 20’s, was telling a co-worker about Harvey Mason’s drumming on …
Back to School for Dad
School year started. Man, oh, man, I had no idea the world worked on some kind of schedule. Oh, sure, I was once a kid, I remember the long lazy days of summer, the “Back-to-school” …
Mongolian Camel Bell Ringtone
I was at home with Q last Sunday when the phone rang. It was M, our wife and mother and fun companion. She’d found these beautiful Mongolian Camel Bells and wanted to buy one for …
Novelty? No thanks.
Novelty songs. I generally don’t like them. Yet I do like humor in music. Obviously. (see “The Bobs” or my family music) But just because I end up writing humorous songs sometimes, I don’t really …
I Wish I Were a Troubadour
A couple years ago I was in New York and went to Little, Brown & Co. to meet, for the first time, my editor for the book of “Old Mr. Mackle Hackle”. I came into …
Strangers in the Night – A song that won’t leave me alone
Some songs just don’t go away. Even when it seems like they should. Even when every fibre of my being screams that a song is no good, I am sometimes drawn, against my will, into …
Haruki Murakami
There’s a novelist whose invention and soul and style I am so in love with: Haruki Murakami. His is the kind of writing that I’d like to think I would do if I were a …
Evolution of a Musician Part 2
The Listening Years… Up until February of 1964 (when I was 7), music just didn’t really mean much to me. On that particular night, we were at my grandparents house in Los Gatos, California, and …
My Solution to Global Warming
“It’s also a great Axe grinder!” Here’s my idea. Some kind of huge pedal-powered flywheel. I mean huge. 6 feet in diameter, one foot in width, made of stone or metal. I’m not a physicist, …
TV shows that are better than movies?
We’ve been watching a lot of TV lately. Well, not TV, not stuff that comes on a cable or over the airwaves, but shows we’re renting from Netflix. We miss watching full-length movies, but by …
Crowing, crowing…gone
Goodbye, little crow… On the ides of May, I found the little crow dead. The parents had already gotten the news, and though they still hung around in the trees for a couple of days, …
I’m Crowing
I’ve had a few days of being hectored and cawed at by nervous, anxious parental crows. Their fledgling disappeared the day after it was found here, and the Mom and Dad have kept a hawk-like …
Crows in my Yard
This morning there’s a pair of crows cawing raucously all around my studio. Here’s why… As I was about to open the door to my back stoop yesterday morning, I noticed a small crow sitting …
45’s were sleazy, mp3s are…?
Early on (like, when I was 10 years old) I had a moral judgment against 45 singles. They were a ripoff (LPs had a much better song-per-dollar ratio); they were a shallow glimpse into an …
Music Doesn’t Smell
Don’t know why this crossed my mind, or if it’s even true, but it seems to me that music doesn’t smell. For such a powerful, visceral, emotional art form, that’s a strange thing. But I …
What do kids’ musicians listen to in their off hours?
What do kids’ musicians listen to when we’re not on the job? Do we worship the Wiggles? Boogie down to some Barney? Relax to Raffi? Sip some Chardonnay on Sesame Street? Get real. We’re grown-ups. …
Touch the Sound – What a film!
I saw the most beautiful film the other week. It’s called “Touch the Sound”, about the soulful and amazing percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who happens to be deaf. She lives and breathes music, and she has …
Evolution of a musician – Part 1
Before I saw/heard the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show along with the rest of America in 1964, music was not a passion of mine. There were no musical instruments in our house. My parents …
How to Find Good Music
Listened to some of an interview/guest DJ spot with Ray Davies on All Songs Considered over breakfast this morning. (Great interview, btw) He recounted radio in the UK back in the 50’s, how there were …
Too Good for Kids?
I just had a little email conversation with Bill Harley, about a comment he received after a recent concert. The person told him “You’re too good to sing for kids.” Well, that’s a nice compliment …