The Internet is a truly splendid thing.

Last month, while watching the closing scene of the season finale of ABC’s “Castle”, I heard this lovely song in the background and had to know who was responsible for putting a smile on my face. A Google search or two led me to the MySpace page of Oregon’s Sara Jackson-Holman, the piano-playing singer-songwriter whose song, “Into the Blue”, had me repeatedly rewinding the end of my television program. A few emails (thanks to Alex at www.InMusicWeTrust.com) and dozens of listens to the tracks on her MySpace page later, and here we are. To crib the title of Drake’s new album, you can thank me later for introducing you to this great young talent.

10 Questions with…Jimmy LaValle of The Album Leaf
Congratulations on the new album, A Chorus of Storytellers. Given your reputation for often working alone, how literal should we take this title?
thank you. you should take it very literal. its the exact inspiration for the title. i had all my live band play on this record. we’ve all got stories behind it.
The videos that accompany songs like “On Your Way” and “Always for You” are interesting visual pieces that simultaneously try not to distract from the listening experience. Is this something that …

I was in Los Angeles in the early months of 2008, working on a couple of tracks with my buddy John Spiker (Tenacious D, Trainwreck, Filter) on a demo for R&B pop artist Storm Deisel. After one of the recording sessions, I got a call from my good friend Nate Rothacker (Trainwreck) saying that he wanted to take me to a show in Silver Lake.
We get to a venue that had to have once been an old movie theater and make our way upstairs to meet the band. My assumption …

It has been said before and will be said many more  times to come, but for us “80s Babies”, John Hughes got it with a depth that we didn’t think adults possessed. With “Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club”, he opened the American Teenager’s diary to the world and showed us to be full-fledged human beings with our own social castes and fears and triumphs that most of our parents didn’t have the time (or maybe the eyes) to see. He understood the stuff our fantasies were made of and …

A couple of years ago, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing one of the most singular artists of the past ten years or so – Mr. Ramble Jon Krohn, better known to the universe as RJD2. The interview was initially for a book I was working on at the time, but a recent opportunity to read over it again has me believing that this is prime IMARS material.

Enjoy.

New video for the first single off “Sounds of the Universe”. Very creepy.
Depeche Mode – “Wrong” (official music video)

Almost all of the time, you’re sure where a rap video is headed. Not this time!

A fantastically retro performance of the single from Saadiq’s The Way I See It.

Okay, well here goes…
It happened on the 23rd of August 2008 in Melbourne, Australia, the night before my birthday. Cobra Starship, The Academy Is… and Panic at the Disco were playing at the Rod Laver Arena. All three of the bands played great that night and after the show finished I was walking past a bathroom to get to the exit and I noticed a rather large crowd of teenage girls. They were all just kind of standing there, not really saying much and since I am only five feet …

Admit it.
You like Digital Underground, even if it’s just a little bit. At least that was the reasoning behind how I ended up in downtown Columbus, Ohio, smack in the middle of one of their shows some years ago. The whole crowd was caught up in the 90s music video vibe that is a D.U. show, complete with girls booty-dancing on stage while the photographers snapped away. That being the case, I was a little surprised to find myself pulled up onto the stage to dance with the unforgettable Mr. …