"Scratch My Brain" is Jeff Albert's blog. It ran on wordpress for about 20 years and had periods of lots of activity and maybe even some attention from small parts of the music world. Life changed and I posted here much less. This is a new "clean slate" version of this blog. You can explore the archive of the 2005-2025 version here. Thanks, Jeff (5 July 2026)
Jeff's music website - Jeff's academic website, Jeff on youtube, and Jeff on bluesky
19 July 2026: Alexandria and I spent a couple of days in Columbia, SC this past week hanging out for To Begin, Again, a two night festival of (mostly) improvised music organized by Chicago drummer and composer Tim Daisy. There is a long-running relationship between Chicago musicians and the very healthy creative music scene in Columbia. The music was excellent and it was great to see many friends and hear them play. I was having so much fun listening, I forgot to take any pictures. We also had a fruitful trip to Papa Jazz Record Shoppe and a lovely afternoon at the hotel pool. On Thursday we had brunch at smallSUGAR, and it was so good we went back again on Friday before we left town. If you get a chance to hear music in Columbia, SC, take it.
5 July 2026: Today I encountered unplatform via an article in Wired. If you have been looking for ways to get away from the modern surveillance web/social media centered way of being online, this might be of interest.