Anthony Dean-Harris
Editor-in-Chief
anthony.deanharris[at]nextbop[dot]com / @retronius

Lately, I’ve been running across a lot of music that’s been pulling my attention away from jazz. In a way, I sort of feel like I’m betraying where I’ve been devoting most of my energy. Between thinking up all kinds of idea for this site and what I try to do with [KRTU], I feel like I’ve made jazz my wife, or at least my pretty steady girlfriend.

Anthony Dean-Harris
Editor-in-Chief
anthony.deanharris[at]nextbop[dot]com / @retronius

I was in a pretty bad mood a couple of days ago and I just needed to play a bunch of ballads to get myself out of it. The next morning, I filled a whole Post-It note with songs I knew I'd play this week. I don't normally play an evening of ballads but that's where I'm headed for [this show] and I hope you come along for the ride.

Anthony Dean-Harris
Editor-in-Chief
anthony.deanharris[at]nextbop[dot]com / @retronius

As I get dressed in the mornings, I usually turn on Bravo to watch old episodes of The West Wing. The other morning, as I was ironing my pants, a commercial came on for PillowPets.

Anthony Dean-Harris
Editor-in-Chief
anthony.deanharris[at]nextbop[dot]com / @retronius

Think back to third grade. Think back to that time when class was that thing that got in the way of lunch or recess (if you came of age in the time when children still had recess). Think back on all the subjects and topics that became the foundation for the things you know today. One of those things had to be main idea. To an eight-year-old, thinking about the big picture of everything is one of those concepts that’s crucial to get down for the rest of your life.

As folks who are invested in the future of jazz and spreading it to the masses, our main focus at Nextbop (and maybe you as well, dear reader) is to ensure that jazz isn’t seen as some dusty museum piece that scares off laypeople. Yet, it’s hard to just ignore this genre's rich history. The big picture of jazz includes what folks are creating in jazz and its periphery. Try as we might to not think of jazz as a historical exhibit, what we do now is still a part of jazz history.

Anthony Dean-Harris
Editor-in-Chief
anthony.deanharris[at]nextbop[dot]com / @retronius

Last week's Line-Up didn't quite gel right and that sort of bugs me. For a moment, I considered playing the exact same songs but in a more coherent order, but instead I chose to just move forward as I do with everything else I do and make this show at least 200% better than before. Hopefully, you'll agree that [this show] fulfilled that promise...

Anthony Dean-Harris
Editor-in-Chief
anthony.deanharris[at]nextbop[dot]com / @retronius

Since I volunteer my time at a radio station, I often get a lot of interesting music. Since [KRTU] is geared toward playing a wide range of everything the jazz canon has to offer 17 hours a day while still sounding accessible to a layperson, it tends to reject many of the albums it gets in for various reasons. The other seven hours of the day are geared toward indie rock and other genres that one would come to expect for a college radio station. Thus, it tends to get a little interesting when an album comes in that straddles the line of jazz and rock but isn’t quite radio friendly enough for either format. This is where I come in. I have always been a lover of that fringe music.

Anthony Dean-Harris
Editor-in-Chief
anthony.deanharris[at]nextbop[dot]com / @retronius

I'm not going to go into a lot of particulars about what Friday entailed but let me just say you know I love everyone who hears this show when I still put together such great music for you all to hear after a long day like this. It's been long, tiring, but good. With such a runaround day like this, it's perfect to listen to this great music...

Anthony Dean-Harris
Editor-in-Chief
anthony.deanharris[at]nextbop[dot]com / @retronius
Photo of the Undead Jazz Fest by the highly lauded Patrick Jarenwattananon

To be quite honest, I don’t really have a topic this week. Part of that is because things are a little topsy turvy here at Nextbop but we’re sure to come out of it really soon to continue to bring you quality content to show the best that jazz can offer. The other reason why is because I frankly think our good friend, Patrick Jarenwattananon has said everything I’ve wanted to say quite perfectly this week.

Anthony Dean-Harris
Editor-in-Chief
anthony.deanharris[at]nextbop[dot]com / @retronius

As I state at the end of all my columns, I host a show on [KRTU San Antonio] called The Line-Up on Friday nights at 10/9 Central that deals primarily with all the kinds of music in which Nextbop specializes. It's this show that caught Seb's eye and was part of what got me this gig here at Nextbop. The other day, I was talking with Seb and wondered why I wasn't posting the playlists for each episode of the show on this site, especially since I would be simultaneously posting the same thing on [my personal blog]. Seb said all is cool so here is the playlist for this last Friday's Line-Up. Check out the show at [KRTU's audio archives] and live on KRTU on Friday nights.

Anthony Dean-Harris
Editor-in-Chief
anthony.deanharris[at]nextbop[dot]com / @retronius

photo: "Harlem 1958" originally published in Esquire magazine in 1959

As I say quite often, I have a show on my local jazz radio station, [KRTU San Antonio], that deals primarily with the kind of jazz in which Nextbop specializes. If you ever wanted to hear the voice attached to the posts you read every week, you should probably tune in Fridays at 9pm Central time (we have a [webstream and audio archives], you know). Yet while my little hour on the radio plays nothing but (to hijack Seb again) SiCK modern mainstream jazz, the rest of the station runs the whole gamut of the genre.