May 2015

  • Rap Music and Street Consciousness

    Rap Music and Street Consciousness by Cheryl L. Keyes I enjoy reading scholarly work on rap music and hip-hop culture. This is the second book I’ve read from this author. Her book, Black Noise is also a great read and I would recommend both. I like how she addressed the constant criticism this music gets […]


  • Social Media and Print Media Converge in CREATIV

    These are the first two issues of Creativ Magazine, an ambitious project to celebrate creativity in all its forms. In a day and age where many print publications are going belly up and others switching over to being completely digital, it’s a bold move. The magazine highlights creative people in sports, music, painting, photography, film, […]


  • Updated – Free Method Book for Beginning Band

    My favourite resource for teaching instrumental music is a long out-of-print book called Band Fundamentals in Easy Steps. I absolutely love it. It is organized brilliantly, starts out students with pieces they can immediately have success on, and it introduces new notes and topics at a good pace. I have tried out other method books […]


  • Chasing Content – May 2014

    Blog posts get buried in the archives so quickly. That is why once a month, I look back at the posts that were published exactly a year ago with a little feature called Chasing Content. You can read all of the posts from last May, or just these presonal favourites. When Will I Ever Use […]


  • WWW: Series Concludes with Wonder

    Wonder by Robert J. Sawyer Most science fiction tends to demonize any kind of intelligence that arises from a machine. I don’t know why but self-aware robots, intelligent computers, or artificial intelligence lifeforms always end up becoming evil in these stories. That’s not the case with this story, however. This is the final chapter in a […]


  • The Best Place to Teach

    If you ask yourself, “Where is the best place on campus to deliver this lesson?” You might find that the answer is not your room. You’ll never know if you don’t ask.  So where can you teach a lesson? Outside Some school grounds are now developing garden areas and outdoor classrooms. But even if your […]


  • Word is Bond Rap Radio – Forest City Represents!

    London, Ontario, Canada is known as The Forest City and it has a lot of talent when it comes to hip-hop. I regularly feature local artists on my radio show. You can tune in live Monday nights / Tuesday mornings from 12:00 midnight to 2:00 a.m. on 94.9 CHRW Like us on Facebook – Word […]


  • Juliet Naked (Nothing Inappropriate Here)

    Juliet Naked by Nick Hornby Tucker Crowe crafted one of the most brilliant break-up albums of all time. It was titled “Juliet” and was a runway success back in the 1980s. Then, one night during a tour to support that album, Crowe quit the music scene completely and pretty much disappeared from society. His dedicated fans continued to […]


  • You Need a Good Plan, Not a Good Excuse!

    I got a lot out of Barbara Coloroso’s book, Kids Are Worth It. I took pages and pages of notes when I read it. The book is now full of underlines and margin notes. I never used to be able to write in my books. I didn’t want to mess them up. I wanted them […]


  • Women in Hip-Hop 5 (Complete Broadcast)

    Welcome to our 5th Annual Women in Hip-Hop Spectacular. 5 hours of radio shining a spotlight on hip-hop’s better half. We do this every single year on International Women’s Day to celebrate the female voices we have in hip-hop music and culture. This year’s show featured some mixsets by yours truly, a radio panel discussion […]