Ever since the Blagojevich scandal broke, Whet and Miner and Ben and Mick have gotten most of the red meat. No surprise there. But every so often an opportunity presents itself to approach the big political story of the day through music. 

In this case, the opportunity comes from Bird Names front man David Lineal, who’s written and recorded an album about the strange connection he feels to our possibly felonious governor. You can download the music for free from the band’s site; our story about the album, by Lineal’s former bandmate Liam Warfield, is here.

Philip Montoro has been an editorial employee of the Reader since 1996 and its music editor since 2004. Pieces he has edited have appeared in Da Capo’s annual Best Music Writing anthologies in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2011. He shared two Lisagor Awards in 2019 for a story on gospel pioneer Lou Della Evans-Reid and another in 2021 for Leor Galil's history of Neo, and he’s also split three national awards from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia: one for multimedia in 2019 for his work on the TRiiBE collaboration the Block Beat, and two (in 2020 and 2022) for editing the music writing of Reader staffer Leor Galil. You can also follow him on Twitter.