NEP at Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, NCWeb: robertlesterfolsom.comContact: dshaw@baselinemusic.comPlayers: Nep, vocals; Tyler Pons, drums; Sophia Damiani, bass; Jake Sonderman, guitar

Grab your slide rules: Albert Einstein almost had it right, but the real equation on display at Cat’s Cradle was E = NEP².

That proof arrived in the form of NEP (yes, that’s really her name)—a shadow-boxing indie-pop artist who brought a cocktail of swagger, nervous laughter, and Daytona Beach daydreams to the adoring Back Room crowd.

NEP burst onto the stage with a quick four-song salvo: “Daytona,” “Fender,” “Lovelace,” and “Milktown,” followed by the brisk pop flash of “Rocket Ship.” None of it calmed the room. If anything, the next stretch detonated the place: “Teddy,” “Biketoberfest,” “All Around Beauty,” and “Soundtrack” spilled out in a sugar rush of jangling guitars and nervous giggles.

The crowd surged toward the stage in what became a kind of musical cyclone. The quartet itself looked almost comically small against the swell of bodies pressed forward—NEP, her guitarist, and drummer hovering around the five-foot mark, while the bass player stood like a benevolent giant beside them.

Add NEP’s constant giggle—somewhere between nervous energy and mischievous charm—and the whole affair began to resemble a cinematic “escape from the kids’ table at Thanksgiving.”

The guitar work was simple and unadorned—almost stubbornly so—but it carried a kind of innocence that fit the material. The grooves were uncomplicated, the structures tidy, and the melodies had the breezy, slightly sunburned feel of songs written somewhere between a dorm room and a beach parking lot.

At times, the silliness threatened to overwhelm the music. There were genuinely lovely musical moments that got sliced apart by NEP’s constant asides and laughter. The vibe in the room became so beach-soaked you could almost smell the Coppertone and feel sand under your feet. The sugary, slightly smug Hello Kitty delivery sometimes obscured the delicate little juxtapositions the band—competent if understated—was putting together.

Mid-set, the groove settled into something like autopilot before reanimating with “I Close My Eyes,” “Florida Girl,” and the crowd favorite “Pup.” Without a dominant soloist or any real instrumental grandstanding, the evening became less about virtuosity and more about atmosphere: a blend of sonic melancholy and occasional Beach Blanket Bingo chaos.

The songwriting itself showed care. Songs were thoughtfully paced and clearly diaristic. There may not yet be an obvious hit single lurking in the catalog, but a certain gravitational pull—something about Daytona, about leaving and remembering—kept the set moving forward.

That Florida lineage occasionally bubbled at the surface. The warm embers of Tom Petty and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers flickered here and there, and the ghost of Southern guitar traditions that ultimately fed into The Allman Brothers Band hovered around the edges of the sound.

Elsewhere you could hear faint splashes of quirky new-wave DNA—moments that hinted at the playful pop instincts of Bow Wow Wow and the bright theatricality later embraced by Culture Club—another clue to the mixing bowl of beach culture, pop instinct, and youthful irreverence that NEP seems to inhabit. The post NEP at Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, NC first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Sony in advanced talks to buy Blackstone’s Recognition Music for up to $4B, reports BloombergThe acquisition would be made through Sony's music rights-buying JV with Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, the news outlet reported
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From Wine to Diamonds, Every Major Consumer Industry Protects You From Fakes. Why Doesn’t Music?Music supervisor and Catalog founder Frederic Schindler argues it's time for standardized 'Music Facts' labels – modeled on food nutrition panels – to make the origin of every track in the supply chain visible to consumers.
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Classical Highlights for April 2026Our new reviewers have been thrown into the vast world of new Classical recordings and are finding their footings. Some of the highlights they found this month include literature-inspired music by composer-conductor Daníel Bjarnson, performed by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

Udio admits to scraping YouTube audio for AI training in answer to Sony Music lawsuitUdio admitted that its models were trained with “a vast amount of different kinds of sound recordings” gathered from publicly available sources.
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Amy Allen, Sony Music Publishing ,’Die With a Smile’ among big winners at 2026 ASCAP Pop Music Awards"We are honored to be named ASCAP's Pop Publisher of the Year," said Katie Welle, Sony Music Publishing President, Head of A&R.
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DPA MICROPHONES CAPTURE NUANCE AND DETAIL ON YANN TIERSEN’S TOURDPA Microphones released a statement this week, stating that, "Reproducing the full emotional and dynamic range of a solo piano on a large-scale sound system presents a unique set of challenges, especially when that performance is as nuanced as Yann Tiersen’s. Known for his emotive, minimalist compositions and genre-blending artistry, his latest tour, titled “Rathlin from a Distance | The Liquid Hour,” unfolds in two distinct chapters: an opening set of a solo piano followed by a second half steeped in modular synthesis and electronics. For Veteran Live Sound Engineer Jamie Harley, whose four‑decade career spans electronic, indie and acoustic music, the challenge was finding a way to blend these two very different sound worlds into a seamless live experience each night. The DPA Microphones’ DPK2015 Piano Stereo Kit became an essential part of that equation."

“Working with DPA Microphones on Yann Tiersen’s tour has been about capturing nuance without compromise,” says Veteran Live Sound Engineer Jamie Harley to MC. “Yann’s performance moves between fragile, highly textural piano passages and expansive electronic moments, so the microphones must stay honest to the source while giving me control in very dynamic environments. The DPK2015 Piano Stereo Kit, in particular, lets me focus the microphone exactly where it needs to sit—preserving detail, avoiding midrange build-up and keeping everything natural, even at high gain on large systems. When the technology disappears and the piano simply sounds like itself night after night, that’s when you know you’ve got it right.”

The statement continues: "For the piano-driven portion of the performance, Harley deployed the stereo pair of DPA 2015 Wide Cardioid Microphones, which are included in the miking kit. Known for their natural sound reproduction and controlled off-axis response, the 2015s proved to be a powerful tool in managing the delicate tonal characteristics of Tiersen’s playing style. “Yann plays in a very textural way,” Harley explains. “He’ll hold notes and build layers of tone. If you’re not careful, things can get mid-range-heavy quite quickly. I was really interested to see how the piano kit would handle that, and it worked extremely well.”

"The 2015 microphones were positioned inside the piano to capture both clarity and depth, with a focus on maintaining tonal balance across the instrument’s full range. The wide cardioid pickup pattern of the mics allowed Harley to capture the natural resonance of the piano while minimizing unwanted bleed."

“Having that directional control is a godsend,” he says. “Especially when you’re working with a very quiet, delicate instrument on a large system. You need microphones that keep everything tight and focused exactly where they need to be.” 

The post DPA MICROPHONES CAPTURE NUANCE AND DETAIL ON YANN TIERSEN’S TOUR first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

From The Orchard acquiring Brazil’s OniMusic to the BMG-Concord merger… it’s MBW’s weekly round-upThe biggest headlines from the past few days...
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THE JEREMIAH SHOW: Kailee Spark Is RestlessSinger-songwriter Kailee Spark brings her quiet honesty to The Jeremiah Show, where two powerful conversations reveal the artist behind the music.

In her first appearance, she introduces her debut album Savor This, reflecting on a path shaped by her writing, travel, and a need to express what she couldn’t always say out loud—“Music was something I could turn to instead of talking.”

In the next interview, the conversation shifts, shaped by the personal losses of her father and grandmother within weeks of each other, and by the experiences behind her single “Restless.”

Still, her perspective remains grounded: “Time is kind of irrelevant—the only time we have is now.” Across both interviews, Kailee resists the pressure to play small—“People tell you to think smaller—but you shouldn’t”—and instead leans into a creative life that’s instinctive, present, and unfiltered.

To hear the full story behind the songs, listen to both episodes of The Jeremiah Show featuring Kailee Spark.

Kailee Spark Savor This Interview

Kailee Spark Is Restless Interview

Kailee’s Website

Kailee Spark’s Instagram

Listen to Kailee Spark’s Music on Spotify

THE JEREMIAH SHOW - POP CULTURE, MUSIC ICONS, and FOOD GODS 

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The Jeremiah Show - Please Subscribe - CLICK HERE

Host | Executive Producer - Jeremiah D. Higgins

Sound Designer - Graham Palmer, SURPRISE STUDIO

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The Jeremiah Show Airs Monday - Friday, 10 am - 12 pm, and 9 pm on Friday Nights on RADIO EVOLVE ROCKS in Santa Barbara, California

The post THE JEREMIAH SHOW: Kailee Spark Is Restless first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

In Q1, YouTube Music and Premium saw ‘largest quarterly increase’ in non-trial subscribers since 2018 launch, says Alphabet CEO, as platform’s quarterly ad revenues rose to $9.88BYouTube's advertising revenue grew 11% YoY to $9.88 billion in Q1 2026
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I imagine this is quite logical thing and generally people don't want to listen to #music simply and automatically generated by #AI machines. There is some good stuff for #creativity support and is interesting as well in general. But I think it is good to smartly combine analog, digital and AI worlds...or not...there is not one right answer

UMG generated $3.39 billion in Q1, up 8.1% YoY – driven by BTS, Olivia Dean, Taylor Swift, and moreUniversal Music Group has published its Q1 2026 results for the three months ending March 31
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Recording industry Renaissance man David Goggin (aka Mr. Bonzai) passes at 78Music Connection was saddened to learn of the passing of David "Mr. Bonzai" Goggin this week:

David Goggin (often known by his pen name “Mr. Bonzai”), whose journalism, photography, visual art, and advocacy chronicled the golden age of recording studios, has died peacefully after a valiant fight with two cancers and a stroke. He was 78.

David is survived by his wife of 42 years, acclaimed artist Keiko Kasai, with whom he shared a long and intimate personal and artistic partnership. She was the muse for over 1,000 of his drawings and portraits.

A true Renaissance man, Goggin was an accomplished artist, writer, photographer, journalist, filmmaker, and poet. He was best known for his monthly interviews with producers, engineers, and musicians for Mix magazine and later EQ magazine from the late 1970s through the 1990s. He produced over 250 interviews for both these magazines, offering quirky, insightful, and vivid portraits of studio life, where some of the era’s most iconic albums were recorded. His work documented the voices of producers, engineers, and session musicians often overlooked in mainstream music reporting.“

I just kind of fell into it. I was always around music,” Goggin told podcaster Daniel Keller. “I wasn’t thinking about a career; I was just doing what I loved. Suddenly, I’m in the studio with these legends, documenting them making their music. This became my life—capturing these moments. I realized I had a front-row seat to history.”

Born in Kingston, New York in 1947 to cartoonist Edward James Goggin and Anna Marie Farrell, David Goggin graduated from the University of California at Irvine (UCI) with a degree in English Literature. After producing light shows for concerts by Janis Joplin and Buffalo Springfield at UCI, he spent a year studying abroad at the University of Edinburgh and traveled extensively in the UK, where he met John Lennon in 1968-1969, and witnessed a session where The Beatles recorded “I Am the Walrus.” This experience ignited Goggin’s lifelong passion for the craft of recording and the people behind it.

While at UCI, Goggin studied drawing with David Hockney; it was a pursuit he continued throughout his lifetime. Building from his drawing technique, his art practice expanded to include delicate wire sculptures that are widely collected by an eclectic group of Hollywood luminaries including Norman Lear.Goggin started his career in media in the late sixties, hosting a late-night comedy radio show in Montreal. When the show was cancelled, David returned to Orange County and began work in the recording industry as the studio manager at the Lyon Recording Studio, while doing publicity for an affiliated company, Lyon Lamb Video Animation Systems.

Goggin’s first break as a music journalist came with the then-startup Mix magazine in 1979, where editor and soon-to-be lifelong friend David Schwartz invited him to write a monthly column about the pressured, offbeat life inside a small Orange County recording studio. Writing under the pen name Mr. Bonzai, his columns became a staple of the magazine, evolving into his first book and the popular Lunching with Mr. Bonzai series. Over his career, Goggin wrote more than 1,000 articles and interviews for major publications in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, including Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Billboard, and The Hollywood Reporter, Sound & Recording Japan.

Among his many skills was his ability to elicit brain-scratching quotes from pressured artists. Film composer CJ Vanston called him “the mother of all flies on the wall,” and Suzanne Ciani said he was “always a charming and clever centerpiece at any industry convention,” while “Weird Al” Yankovic said that Mr. Bonzai “got inside my mind when I wasn’t looking,” and Graham Nash observed that his greatest talent was “being invisible,” and George Massenburg described him simply as “curiosity and joy.”

Many of his articles featured his award-winning photography, establishing him as Los Angeles’ preeminent recording studio photographer. Sights of Goggin, in his pork pie hat, metallic glasses, lanyard Montblanc fountain pen, and multi-colored shirt, working booths at industry conventions with a Leica camera and ladder in hand, made him one of the most recognized figures in the pro-audio industry.

Goggin’s early studio stories were compiled into his first book, Studio Life: The Other Side of the Tracks (1984), and his life’s work included seven more books: Santa’s Secret Sled (1980), co-written with Bruce Lyon; Hal Blaine and The Wrecking Crew (1990), co-written with legendary session drummer Hal Blaine; The Sound of Money (2000), co-written with his friend and client Chris Stone; Faces of Music (2006); Music Smarts (2009); and John Lennon’s Tooth (2012).

In 2025, he co-authored Buzz Me In: Inside the Record Plant Studios with music journalist Martin Porter, reconstructing the wild and innovative history of Record Plant Studios in New York, Sausalito, and Los Angeles, where Goggin worked as a press agent.

In addition to his work at Record Plant, Goggin collaborated with the studio’s owner Chris Stone on industry advocacy groups such as SPARS and the World Studio Group. He co-founded, with producer/engineer Ed Cherney and Stone, the Music Producers Guild of the Americas, which later became the Producers & Engineers Wing of the Recording Academy.

He was also active in the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) community, producing conference sessions with audio-industry pioneers and hosting the Technical Excellence & Creativity (TEC) Awards. He appeared on NAMM’s TEC Tracks stage in January 2026, with Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh and producer Bob Margouleff to discuss the making of the 1980 hit “Whip It” at Record Plant.Mothersbaugh once called him “a master of modern music photojournalism,” obliquely adding that “Mr. Bonzai is the future of the past.”Goggin’s company, Communication Arcs, provided PR and photographic services to leading pro-audio manufacturers and recording studios, including Sony, Telefunken, Sommer Cable, Ocean Way Recording, United Recording, and Bernie Grundman Mastering.

For half a century, David Goggin’s work compiled the audio and visual history of the recording studio era, bridging the early creative chaos of the analog studio age and the digital birth of personal music production, always focusing the lens on the people and technology behind the scenes that made the music happen.

"David 'Mr. Bonzai' Goggin was a friend of mine, and to countless others in the Pro Audio/MI industries," says MC publisher Eric Bettelli. "Dave's contribution to our industry spans decades. He was a top notch professional music journalist, publicist and author, whose work speaks for itself. He just never missed a beat. And most of all, Dave was one of the good guys, who was always eager to share his incredible talent with all. A real Mench. Dave, RIP, and hope to see you again on the other side."The post Recording industry Renaissance man David Goggin (aka Mr. Bonzai) passes at 78 first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

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BMG+Concord is the music industry’s biggest bet in years. What’s the plan?Thomas Coesfeld and Bob Valentine answer MBW's questions on a mega-merger – and ambitious targets
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