Barry Smolin

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Barry Smolin
Background information
Also known asMr. Smolin
Born (1961-04-20) April 20, 1961 (age 63)
OriginLos Angeles, California

Barry Smolin, also known as Mr. Smolin (born April 20, 1961) is an American radio host, teacher, composer, and writer. He is currently teaching at Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles, and is the host of a radio program on KPFK. He was accused of sexual abuse by a former student on April 27, 2021.

Career

Radio

The Music Never Stops

From 1995 to 2012, Smolin was the host of The Music Never Stops, a psychedelic radio show on KPFK in Los Angeles, California[1] for which Smolin won the first ever Jammy Award for "Best Radio Show" in 2000.[2] Smolin's program was also nominated for an LA Weekly Music Award in 2004 in the "Best Radio Show" category.[3] The Music Never Stops began as a program featuring live recordings of the Grateful Dead, but after the death of Jerry Garcia; Smolin expanded the scope of the show to include contemporary jam-rock and miscellaneous psychedelia, paying special attention to music being made by musicians in Los Angeles. The program has been covered in Relix magazine[4] and Jambands.com.

Head Room

Smolin is currently the host of the program Head Room on KPFK,[5] heard every Sunday Night from 8pm-10pm.

Teaching

Smolin's teaching career has been featured in articles in Time[6] and the Los Angeles Times,[7] as well as in the Larchmont Chronicle,[8] and the Library Foundation of L.A.'s "My Moby-Dick" tribute.[9][10] From 1987 to 1992, Smolin taught English at Fairfax High School (the school Smolin himself graduated from in 1978) in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Since leaving Fairfax in 1992, he has been on the faculty at Alexander Hamilton High School, teaching English in the Hamilton Humanities Magnet program.

Music

Pop Music

As a songwriter, Smolin has composed music for the Showtime television series Weeds, with his song "The Earth Keeps Turning On" appearing in Season 3's Episode 7, entitled "He Taught Me How To Drive By"[11] as well as on the Weeds Season 3 Soundtrack album. Under the performance moniker Mr. Smolin he has released four albums, At Apogee (2004) and The Crumbling Empire Of White People (2007) (both produced by Tony Award winning composer/dramatist Stew, best known for his musical Passing Strange), a Los Angeles song-cycle entitled Bring Back The Real Don Steele (2009),[12] and a collaboration with Double Naught Spy Car entitled Heaven's Not High (2013). In 2015, Smolin released two singles: "Fairfax High School" about his alma mater and "The Man I Met Once."

Experimental Music

Since 2016, Smolin has primarily composed experimental pieces, both instrumental and spoken word. With Double Naught Spy Car, he set chapter 1 of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake to music as part of the Waywords and Meansigns Project,[13] which was released in 2016 as was an album of the project's instrumental tracks called "That Tragoady Thundersday." In September 2017, he released an instrumental album entitled The Sooterkin Library, a trio project that Smolin describes as "12-Tone Avant-Freak Mongrel Psycho-Tonk.".[14]

Writing

Smolin is the author of 2 novellas: Narcissus In The Dark (2012),[15] whose narrator is God sentenced to eternity in a dungeon and whose consciousness thinks new universes into being while sorting through the detritus of his troubled past, and the experimental prose project Wake Up In The Dreamhouse,[16] composed one sentence at a time on Twitter. In May 2011, Smolin released a volume of selected poetry covering the years 1988–2010 entitled Always Be Madly In Love.[17] His most recent fiction project is a Trilogy entitled The Miranda Complex, Volume 1 of which was published in 2016[18] with Volume 2 following in 2017,[19] and the concluding Volume 3 in 2018.[20] The Miranda Complex chronicles the unconsummated romantic relationship between Lance Atlas and Miranda Savitch, 2 teenagers in 1970s Los Angeles.

Personal life

Sexual abuse allegations

On April 27, 2021, a woman filed a lawsuit under the name "Jane Doe" against the Los Angeles Unified School District and Smolin, accusing Smolin of sexually assaulting and grooming a minor student and accusing the district of inadequately responding to the abuse. The complaint alleges that Smolin began giving her special attention when she was a freshman at Alexander Hamilton High School in 2009, giving her music, books, and eventually alcohol and drugs. The lawsuit then alleges that the attention escalated into a physical and sexual relationship by the time she was a senior. The complaint also alleges that other students and adults knew about their relationship, referring to it as “a worst-kept secret at Hamilton". In particular, the complaint contends that a teacher "walked in and Smolin literally threw plaintiff off of him and onto the seat next to him", and accused one other teacher of being aware of the abuse.[21][22] Smolin has not issued a response to these allegations.[21]

Discography

  • At Apogee (2004), produced by Stew
  • The Crumbling Empire Of White People (2007), produced by Stew
  • Bring Back The Real Don Steele (2009)
  • Heaven's Not High (2013)
  • Fairfax High School (single, 2015)
  • The Man I Met Once (single, 2015)
  • Mutt and Jute (single, 2016)
  • Finnegans Wake Chapter 1 (Waywords and Meansigns, 2016)
  • That Tragoady Thundersday (2016)
  • The Sooterkin Library (2017)
  • The Mookse & The Gripes (2018)
  • Mysterium Fidei (2018)
  • The Mole With A Hole In The Whole Of Him (2018)
  • The Five Decades (2018)
  • The Four Mysteries (2018)
  • My Lunch With Lautréamont (2018)
  • Baby Methuselah (2019)
  • Ancients Link With Presents As The Human Chain Extends (2019)
  • Always Be Madly In Love (2019)
  • unspoken (2019)
  • The Age of Endarkenment (2019)
  • Before You Know It (2019)
  • Water Signs (2019)
  • The Day I Met Blassie & Tolos (2019)
  • The Humpback of Nostradamus (2019)
  • Play Free (2019), with Vince Meghrouni
  • The Fantastic Catch (2020)
  • Eyelid Movies (2020)
  • Outside Norms (2020)
  • Say No More (2020)
  • Antediluvian Future (2020)
  • Lurch (2020)
  • Smoke on the Altar (2020)
  • The Minerva Syndrome (2020)
  • Remember My Chains (2020)
  • Doo-Dads (2020)
  • The God Paradox (2020)
  • Havdalah Sonata (2020)
  • That's What They All Say (2020)
  • Pretend To Play (2020)
  • In the Name of Zarking Fardwarks (2020)
  • Slide Down My Rainbow (2020)
  • Hypostasy (2020), with Vince Meghrouni
  • Strange Fire (2020)
  • Great Seizure's Ghost (2020)
  • Radio Andromeda (2020)
  • Frenching (2021)
  • Ode To Billy Jack (2021)
  • Maps To Stars Homes (2021)
  • A Jew In Space (2021)
  • Underworld Orchestra (2021)
  • We Are The Ancestors (2021)
  • When A Weasel Steals Your Chumetz (2021)
  • I Knew It By The River (2021)
  • A Trespass Offering (2021)
  • Tender Buttons (2021)
  • A Pocketful of Poesies (2021)
  • Deep In The Sea-Meant Pond (2021)
  • We Hear Voices (2021)

Bibliography

  • Wake Up In The Dreamhouse (2011)
  • Always Be Madly In Love (2011)
  • Narcissus In The Dark (2012)
  • The Miranda Complex Volume 1: Munchkinland (2016)
  • The Miranda Complex Volume 2: Poppies (2017)
  • The Miranda Complex Volume 3: The Man Behind The Curtain (2018)

References

  1. ^ "The Music Never Stops with Barry Smolin". Archived from the original on 2008-09-22. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
  2. ^ Jammy Award#Award Winners
  3. ^ "LAWMA 2004".
  4. ^ "Art Howard -- Radio Rebels: 6 Shows that Bring Jambands to the Airwaves". www.arthoward.com.
  5. ^ "mr. smolin - radio - head room kpfk 90.7fm". www.mrsmolin.com.
  6. ^ "Education: Who's Teaching Our Children? - TIME". web.archive.org. 2015-06-11. Retrieved 2021-05-03.
  7. ^ Ricci, James (2006-06-09). "Yes, He Does Digress". The Los Angeles Times.
  8. ^ "Barry Smolin". Archived from the original on 2007-04-25. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
  9. ^ LA, Library Foundation of (October 17, 2013). "My Moby Dick - Voice of Ishmael" – via Vimeo.
  10. ^ LA, Library Foundation of (October 17, 2013). "My Moby Dick - In the Beginning" – via Vimeo.
  11. ^ "Showtime – Weeds Music". Archived from the original on 2011-06-15. Retrieved 2011-06-26.
  12. ^ "The Real Don Steele is Alive! Alive!". L.A. Weekly.
  13. ^ "Waywords and Meansigns - Joyce's Finnegans Wake Set to Music". Waywords and Meansigns.
  14. ^ "The Sooterkin Library, by Mr. Smolin". Mr. Smolin.
  15. ^ Smolin, Barry (17 July 2012). Narcissus In The Dark. ISBN 978-1478217602.
  16. ^ Wake Up In The Dreamhouse. ISBN 1460927125.
  17. ^ Always Be Madly In Love. ISBN 1461190401.
  18. ^ Smolin, Barry (26 January 2016). The Miranda Complex Volume 1. ISBN 978-0692614204.
  19. ^ Smolin, Barry (2017). The Miranda Complex Volume 2. ISBN 978-0692797228.
  20. ^ Smolin, Barry (2018-01-16). The Miranda Complex Volume 3: The Man Behind The Curtain (1st ed.). Anomaly Press. ISBN 9780692973769.
  21. ^ a b "LAUSD Teacher Accused Of Grooming, Sexually Abusing Teen Girl". 2021-04-30. Retrieved 2021-05-01.
  22. ^ Wigglesworth, Alex (1 May 2021). "Lawsuit alleges sex abuse by teacher at Hamilton High School". Los Angeles Times.

External links

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