Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by John Rodat
Album Review: Bobby Previte/Jamie Saft/Nels Cline | Music from the Early 21st Century
click to enlarge Bobby Previte/Jamie Saft/Nels Cline Music from the Early 21st Century (RareNoise Records) RareNoiseRecords.com It's a deceptively plainspoken title for an album of far-reaching live improvisation, Music from the Early 21st Century. But before you hit play, there are context clues that this is no generic exercise.
Album Review: Rob Scheps | Comencio
Rob Scheps: Comencio (SteepleChase Records) Rob Scheps says in the notes to Comencio that it's a disk of dedications. One track excepted, that one for his mother, Scheps's dedications are for the composers, or to prominent players associated with the tune. It's interesting how this selection technique creates an emotional narrative in the sequencing.
Album Review: Jamie Saft/Steve Swallow/Bobby Previte | You Don’t Know the Life and The Jamie Saft Quartet | Hidden Corners
click to enlarge Jamie Saft/Steve Swallow/Bobby Previte You Don't Know the Life The Jamie Saft QuartetHidden Corners RareNoiseRecords.com The expressive range of the organ is explored on keyboardist Jamie Saft's You Don't Know the Life. Kicking off with the Bill Evans's composition "Re: Person I Knew," Saft colors drummer Bobby Previte's shuffle-and-chime percussion with guitar-like tones, mounting to a joyous frenzy one might be tempted to say shreds.
Album Review: Nick Hetko/Rich Syracuse/Jeff “Siege” Siegel | When You Were There
click to enlarge When You Were There Nick Hetko/Rich Syracuse/Jeff Siegel(Artists Recording Collective) As far memorials go, When You Were There is a raucous, swinging thing. The trio of pianist Nick Hetko, bassist Rich Syracuse, and drummer Jeff Siegel pay tribute to their mentor and former bandleader Dr. Lee Shaw, who died in 2015, by displaying their own significant chops as players and composers.
Album Review: Jay Anderson | Deepscape
Jay Anderson Deepscape (SteepleChase Records) Steeplechase.dk New Paltz bassist Jay Anderson's new album puts the prolific artist back in the role of bandleader after decades of support playing.
Formerly hip dad, faced with 14-year-old daughter’s music, contemplates surrender
Somewhere in the last 15 years, or so, “hipster” became a term of opprobrium. The connotation was that someone was trying too hard to differentiate himself or herself, often within an already specialized subculture: Tell a hipster that your favorite cocktail is a Manhattan and be prepared for a 15-minute oratory on small-batch rye, filtered-water ice cubes, and private-label, heirloom Maraschino cherries.
Low Flying Hawks deliver on "deceptive and brilliant" Genkaku - The Alt
The songwriters behind this year’s greatest rock and metal album are likely to remain anonymous. The multi-instrumentalists behind Texas’ Low Flying Hawks who go by the initials EHA and AAL have remained relatively anonymous despite releasing one of 2016’s most praised albums. They’ve returned on Genkaku with some famous friends whose presence will likely help them continue their anonymity.
The magic of Solid Sound - The Alt
The first festival-scale concert I ever attended was a country-and-bluegrass gathering in the late ’70s when I was but a sprout. My uncle, a young and struggling Hollywood screenwriter, had flown back east specifically to attend the multi-day traditional-music event, which was only the first thing that confused me about the whole affair. There were no circuits in my pre-teen mind that would comfortably conduct the “come back from Hollywood” signal.
Celebrate Independent Bookstore Day - The Alt
Saturday, April 29, marks the fourth anniversary of Independent Bookstore Day (IBD), a “one-day national party” at indie bookstores across the country. Inspired by the hugely popular Record Store Day, which has celebrated “the unique culture surrounding nearly 1,400 independently owned record stores in the US” for ten years now, IBD shines a light on indie bookstores and the communities that support them. What began as California Bookstore Day in 2014 spread nationwide in 2015.
Interview: Brian Wilson on life and bringing Pet Sounds to the stage - The Alt
Can you name five 20th century American pop composers more important to the growth and development of popular music-as-high art than Brian Wilson? Probably not, and with good reason. The man is a genius and he’s coming to the Palace Theatre on the April 26, playing the Pet Sounds album in its entirety. In 1966, few anticipated Pet Sounds would still resonate over 50 years later. Even Wilson himself is a little surprised. “I didn’t know it would hold up 50 years,” he remarked.
Collar Works: Solid future, new exhibit - The Alt
Founded in 2009 as an artist collective, Collar Works was created to give voice to the contemporary arts in the Capital Region. From the start, its mission was to “support emerging artists and underrepresented artists working in any media, exhibiting challenging and culturally relevant contemporary artworks.” At first, their exhibitions were presented in various vacant spaces throughout downtown Troy.
The archivist: Andrew Borman is the keeper of the games that never were - The Alt
Andrew Borman, a lanky wide-smiled Albany resident and a school librarian by day, uses his free time for something a bit more cutting edge, a little cloak and dagger. He’s tinkering with software, operating systems, scanning auctions, communicating with game designers and creating YouTube videos all in effort to preserve and catalogue video games that were never officially made available to the public. Games some companies would rather the public never see.
The Erotics’ Twenty Years of Glorious Filth - The Alt
There’s an old joke about the toll that hard living has on the higher functions of the human organism: Drinkin’, druggin’, debauchin’ and all the filthy varieties of bi-terminus candle burnin’, what do they do? They kill brain cells. But you already know the punchline, so – how you feelin,’ Capital Region?
Mastodon's Emperor of Sand: Fun with Death - The Alt
Mastodon’s Emperor of Sand could easily have been a disaster and it is hard to explain exactly why it isn’t, as it has a lot of elements lined up against it. After spending their last two discs probing for a way onto rock radio and mainstream accessibility events in the band member’s personal lives sent them back to a their old formula–concept albums filled with shifting song structures and excessive prog tendencies.
Live action adds an admirable level of ick to Ghost in the Shell - The Alt
This one arrives with a lot of baggage. More about that later. Ghost in the Shell is good, and could have been a lot better. Most of the damage was self-inflicted. More about that later, too. The most interesting aspect of it is the way it’s an advance over the animated original, and that’s completely tied in with the world the story creates. It’s that dystopian future we all seem to be dreaming of, when humans are transhuman—part human, part machine.
Friday: Kate White, author of The Secrets You Keep, at Northshire Bookstore - The Alt
Kate White – Glens Falls native, New York Times bestselling novelist, and former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine – will visit Northshire Bookstore in Saratoga Springs on Friday, March 31, and read from her latest book. The reading begins at 7 PM. White’s new psychological thriller, The Secrets You Keep, was released last week by Harper Paperbacks.
Woody Harrelson’s a well-meaning, slow learning jerk in Wilson - The Alt
How many times do you have to approach a stranger, get in their face, and possibly even insult them, before you learn to alter your behavior?
David Salle: Bogus art, or a bogus view of art? - The Alt
David Salle’s March 23 talk at University at Albany, hosted by Joe Donahue and recorded by WAMC radio, was a promotional vehicle for Salle’s How to See: Looking, Talking and Thinking About Art, a new book of art criticism published by W. W. Norton. Beginning in the 1980s, Salle skyrocketed to fame as a painter, and his artistic reputation faithfully drew a crowd to UAlbany that allowed him to plug his art criticism, for which he has also been more quietly recognized.
#SaveTheNEA: Freedom of Thought, Imagination, and Inquiry (for 46 cents/year) - The Alt
By now you’ve heard that the Trump administration’s “skinny budget” calls for the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Institute of Museum and Library Series (IMLS), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Together, these programs represent 0.02 percent of federal spending.
A festival to celebrate New York’s growing craft beer industry - The Alt
The 4th Annual New York Craft Brewers Festival returns to Colonie’s Desmond Hotel this Saturday, a showcase for craft beers from every region of the state. “The first year we had a band,” Paul Leone remembers. “But everyone complained they were too loud. People wanted to talk about the beer.” So they got rid of the band. And they’ve continued to grow. This Saturday (March 25), from 4 to 8 PM, you’ll be able to sample the wares of over 60 breweries.
Beyond Color at The Laffer Gallery in Schuylerville - The Alt
At 5:20 PM, early by most standards for a Saturday night, Schuylerville’s Broad Street was already lined with cars. The village’s two major restaurants – Clark’s Steakhouse and Amigos Cantina – were standing room only, and The Laffer Gallery on 96 Broad was near capacity. For many in the area, downtown Schuylerville was the place to be on March 11. The Laffer Gallery is a fine art gallery and custom frame shop that represents established and emerging contemporary artists in the region.
Kedi: A documentary about cats that’s also about us - The Alt
Istanbul has thousands of street cats, and according to Ceyda Torun’s film Kedi, this has been the case for thousands of years. Cats have watched empires rise and fall, the narration tells us; the film shows us how they’ve adapted to modern life with a combination of feline ingenuity and serene indifference to any obstacles that get in their way. Cats, the filmmaker argues, are integral to the life of Istanbul.
Marc Maron brought few jokes but plenty of humor to the Troy Music Hall - The Alt
It was well into his lengthy set that Marc Maron told his first joke. Teasing an audience member about his taste in music, Maron was reminded of a bit he used to perform earlier in his career. The joke, about the length of Indian musical compositions, drew a solid laugh, to which Maron responded with exaggerated defensiveness: “I used to write jokes. I know how to do it!” Maron has been around forever, at this point.
Hoppy Trails: Mean Max, Common Roots, and Argyle Brewing - The Alt
A couple weeks ago, I booked a reservation on the Hoppy Trails Brew Bus, which operates out of the Lake George area. On a few occasions, I’d seen the mini tour bus with its Hoppy Trails logo in Greenwich, Glens Falls, and Saratoga Springs. I was intrigued, and The Alt’s Brew issue was as good a reason as any to learn more. So, I booked seats on “The Local,” which is an evening tour that hits three breweries in four hours.
Beer quest: In search of the perfectly cheap, perfectly awful
If America were to name a national beverage, Iet’s face it, the forerunner in that competition would be soda pop–a mop bucket-sized serving of soda pop. But if we were to remove soft drinks from consideration the runaway winner would be, of course, beer. America is not unique in that respect. Off the top of your head, I’m sure, you can think of other countries famed for their deep affection for the stuff: Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Australia, etc.
Mad Jack’s Schenectady pride - The Alt
While Adam Elbrecht is a new brewer, fresh from Schenectady County Community College’s Craft Beer Program, he works in a very old establishment. Schenectady’s Van Dyck Lounge was established in 1947, and was a place where some of the most legendary names in jazz performed, including Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. The Lounge, like Schenectady in general, experienced a revitalization when it was bought and reopened under the ownership of the McDonald family in 2009.
A date with a beer obsessive - The Alt
In lieu of doing actual work for our brewery guide this week, I decided to hit a dating app to find someone who could mansplain beer to me. After swiping left about a thousand times, I found the one: Chris Finn, a self-described “beer nerd,” a teacher in Albany schools, and all-around sweet guy. We met at Rare Form Brewery, in Troy, last Wednesday, and had a pleasant, informative evening together. Jaya: I thought this could be sort of be half an interview, half a date.
Streaming: Tim & Eric’s sci-fi insanity - The Alt
Television shows with darkly fantastic themes have been around forever. From The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone to Twin Peaks and X-Files, producers have scored with programming that subverts the more standard stasis of series’ plots and character portrayals.
Logan: The Wolverine does not go gentle into that good night - The Alt
Did James Mangold know that Donald Trump was going to win the election?
Get Out is the great woke horror film we needed - The Alt
Get Out, directed by Jordan Peele, is an instant classic, an absolutely magnificent film. It is a brilliant exegesis on the phenomenon of liberal racism, of the strikingly perverse appeal that black bodies have always had to white people. The film opens up on a situation ordinary in its horror, a black man walking alone in an affluent white suburb.
Albany film prodigy set to debut his first feature film - The Alt
Ask another area resident to pick a filmic association for their hometown and the odds-on favorites are likely to be those movies that have drawn on the Capital Region’s history, and specifically its architectural history: The Age of Innocence used Troy effectively to recreate the Gilded Age splendor of turn-of-the-century Manhattan; most famously, the movie version of William Kennedy’s Ironweed offered a down-at-heels, Depression-era portrayal of the Capital’s shabby rowhouses and diners.
Game Theory: Is virtual reality a fad? - The Alt
Each week editor David Howard King (a lifelong video gamer); Frank D’Aloia, owner of Forgotten Freshness, a retro video game store based in Mechanicville; and Joseph Pirro, owner of Pastime Legends, a chain of retro game stores located in Albany, Troy, Scotia and Ventura, California discuss one topic relating to video games, the gaming industry, technology or gaming culture.
James Baldwin’s words ring terribly true in I Am Not Your Negro - The Alt
Everything changes; nothing changes. That’s the feeling you’ll walk away with after watching Raoul Peck’s documentary essay on literary giant James Baldwin’s life and ideas. Based on an unfinished manuscript, Remember This House, in which Baldwin aimed to examine the lives of three Civil Rights heroes he knew–Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.–the film highlights Baldwin’s ideas about race and power in America.
Tyler Wrightson will hack your company, and you’ll thank him - The Alt
The guy who owns your favorite Albany cafes spends his days and nights infiltrating servers, hacking email, accessing sensitive documents and thwarting physical security systems. Tyler Wrightson, owner of both locations of Albany’s Stacks Espresso Bar, didn’t get his start with coffee beans. In fact, he makes it clear that the credit for the success of those shops belongs elsewhere.
Sex, drugs and a whole lot of violence-just another school day in Fist Fight - The Alt
Fist Fight is a comedy about dysfunction, cruelty, selfishness and sexual frustration in an American high school. The fact that it tells the story from the point of view of teachers instead of the students probably has to do with Hollywood giving up on teenagers as an audience for anything except superhero flicks; the suits haven’t found any other way to pry the post-pubescent creatures away from their Playstations.
John Wick kills again in Chapter 2 . . . and again and again and again - The Alt
Everything about John Wick was a surprise. It did OK at the box office, better than OK with the critics and went on to gain a large cult following on streaming and DVD/Blu-ray. Star Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski (one of Reeves’ Matrix stunt doubles) are back with a sequel that’s more ambitious and a lot more bloody-minded. The action picks up where the last film left off.
Meet cute, meet computer - The Alt
I was recently watching a sitcom, which I’d prefer not to mention by name, about a man telling his children the retrospective tale of How He Met Their Mother. Set in New York City, the program’s premise is that among 12 or so million people, finding your soulmate can be an exhausting, disheartening, though notionally comic experience.
Streaming: Will Arnett vain, neurotic and animated - The Alt
There are those actors whom you like as much for their choices as their actual abilities: people who just seem to gravitate toward interesting projects or collaborators. It’s subjective, of course, and you may not agree with my specific bellwethers. For example, I find that Jason Schwarzman is usually a good sign. Funny thing is, I don’t particularly care for him as an actor; but I like the things in which he turns up. (Conversely, there are talented actors whose choices consistently underwhelm.
Local bands come together for WAMC benefit show - The Alt
“If you’re interested, we’ve got copies of the U.S. Constitution over on that table,” Sub Slab guitarist Rick Kessler said, gesturing nonchalantly off stage. The audience erupted in applause. The Albany quintet was one of four musical guests at the third annual Winter Warm Up! Show at The Linda on Saturday night. The concert to benefit WAMC Northeast Public Radio may be an annual event, but this year there is more at stake for the arts community.
Anatomy of a terrorist attack - The Alt
Patriots Day, directed by Peter Berg, with Mark Wahlberg and Kevin Bacon The Boston Marathon bombings were less than four years ago, which isn’t that long a time if you were in Boston and lived through that horror. In today’s media environment, however, four years is an eternity. It’s almost inevitable that we’d get a movie about the terrorist attack that shut down a major U.S. city in a police dragnet of previously unthinkable scale.
The mysteries of "her" - The Alt
Where does a film go after beginning with a horrifying, violent rape? In a lot of interesting directions, it turns out. When first we meet the then-unnamed, unidentified lead character, she’s sprawled out on the floor being sexually assaulted by a masked man dressed all in black. Her cat watches impassively, then ambles away. Isabelle Huppert is Michele, the attack victim who later chides kitty for not even scratching the intruder (Translated as: “I didn’t expect you to claw his eyes out, but. . . .”).
Live:Phantogram bare their soul - The Alt
They came up in the darkness. In a flash of bright light and fog, the shadow of Sarah Barthel crept its way up the left wall of the packed Upstate Concert Hall. Suddenly there she was, swaying fluidly over the keyboard. Josh Carter bent over his guitar, rearing back to focus on sea of people as the stage lit up in brilliant strobing colors and the crowd erupted. Phantogram was back, and the Capital Region turned out in a big way to welcome them home.
“We’re Wild Adriatic, and we’re from here” - The Alt
Saratoga Springs rang in the New Year with Wild Adriatic. For those in the dark, the band, which formed in the city five years earlier, are a rock trio that grew up in the Queensbury area. Singer and guitarist Travis Gray, drummer Mateo Vosganian, and bassist Rich Derbyshire offer a high-energy, riff-based live show that gets the crowd on its feet. Their official bio notes that they are “a combination of groove, grit, and guitar-heavy swagger.” That’s about right.
Proctors at 90: From movies and vaudeville to a contemporary arts center - The Alt
The 2 PM press conference at Proctor’s was about to begin, and Richard Harris wasn’t having any of it. As Audrey Hughes remembers it, Harris was upset that there hadn’t been a “day of the show ad” in local print media for the opening of his touring production of Camelot, and the brilliant but irascible star—whom Charlton Heston once derided as a “professional Irishman”—was refusing to meet the press.
Caffe Lena ready for next act - The Alt
Editor’s Note: The author, a contributing writer for The Alt, served on Caffe Lena’s board of directors from 2011 to 2016. For many in the music community, Caffe Lena is a sacred space. The legendary venue on Phila Street in Saratoga Springs has served as a testing ground for musicians such as Bob Dylan, Reverend Gary Davis, Dave van Ronk, Ani DiFranco, Sean Rowe, and others for more than 56 years. On Dec.
Ada Harper’s fight to highlight black culture - The Alt
Ada Harper is almost ready. Her dress–a green, shimmering, sequined affair–is finally on, her hair is braided; jewelry is all that remains. She fiddles with her earrings. “Can you believe it?” she asks me, incredulous. “I have the earrings, I just don’t have the backs.” She looks around, and seems to make a decision. Taking a deep breath, she grabs the roll of paper towels and fashions herself an earring “back” out of paper. “Making something out of nothing,” she says. “That’s ingenuity.
Life as it’s lived: brutal, boring and beautiful - The Alt
Manchester by the Sea, directed by Kenneth Lonergan, with Casey Affleck Screenwriter-director (and Pulitzer-nominated playwright) Kenneth Lonergan has a reputation as a staunch, even cranky, defender of his own vision. It’s been reported that he fought, as he has with past releases, to preserve the scope of his most recent film, Manchester by the Sea, which at two hours and 17 minutes may test the patience of audiences.
My year in streaming - The Alt
As father of a young child and a busy professional, I’ve become very particular about how I spend my free time. I spent many hours with my infant daughter snoozing on my lap in the wee hours of the morning as I consumed season after season of The Twilight Zone but as my daughter has become more active and conscious, those spurts are growing fewer and further between.
All singing, all dancing, all Los Angeles - The Alt
If this isn’t the damndest thing. La La Land is a traditional musical with an original score, in which the characters break into song just because. And I’m totally on board with that. There’s no hint of Broadway here. Writer-director Damien Chazelle is heavily under the sway of French director Jacques Demy and Demy’s big 1960s musicals, which in turn were inspired by the great golden-age Hollywood musical romances. This remove sets up an odd, but not disqualifying distance from the material.
Year in Review: visual arts - The Alt
This year, Capital Region residents were treated to a wealth of thoughtful, inventive, and enlightening exhibitions in Capital Region, ranging from Breathing Lights to the Albany Institute of History and Art’s Masterworks: 225 Years of Collecting to The Tang’s spectacular Alma Thomas to The Hyde’s Durer & Rembrandt.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with John
Contact John, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack