Celebrating Community
Doug Brod’s They Just Seem a Little Weird examines KISS, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, Starz and the making of ‘70s rock megastardom. Eric and I didn’t have much to go on, but we didn’t need much, either. We were desperate tweens ready to rock. It didn’t matter that we didn’t know the band that was playing. They had the look and […]
You have to wait until nearly the end of the scrolling credits to see who the musicians are who represent the on-screen characters in Disney’s new animated movie, Soul. The movie is about a jazz pianist, Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), who snags the gig of a lifetime, dies in an accident, and then strives to return his soul […]
Hifi Provisions, located at 237 36th Street in Industry City, Brooklyn, is now open. Upon entry, customers will notice wooden racks, hand built by owner Matthew Coluccio, with records old and new for sale. At the back is a cozy area with velvet, art-deco chairs and an impressive, vintage Bang & Olufssen music system, which he acquired from a psychologist […]
When my first sister told me that her adolescent son had discovered David Bowie, something powerful struck me. My nephew, I realized, had joined the legion of outsiders. He had recognized (on some level) that the world was a complicated place, that in the inescapable realms of majority rule, you usually don’t get to choose to be on the winning […]
As I type this shortly after Christmas, I’m already listening to 2021. And man it sounds good. I try not to be a person who depends on hope, and that negative capability is one of the things that helped keep me (mostly) rational and above water through 2020. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst? More like, expect the […]
The surprising thing about New York black metal band Liturgy in 2020 isn’t frontperson Hunter Hunt-Hendrix coming out as transgender. It might be interesting. It no doubt informs her obscure-anyway songwriting. And she’s to be commended for the forthright and thoughtful coming out video she posted to her YouTube channel in August. But it’s not the most exciting thing about […]
The Argentinian band Reynols wasn’t widely known even before they disappeared for some 17 years. They just don’t do the kind of music that gets a band known. That might change with the release of the new Gona Rubian Ranesa, arguably the most musical album they’ve put out, but really it won’t. Which is a shame, because Reynols represent everything […]
Negativland has been successfully prophesying doom for 40 years now, their secret all along being using society’s words against itself. Pioneers in sampling and culture jamming, the outfit is perhaps most notorious for a petty, prolonged and hilarious copyright battle with U2, but they’ve had a longer, more varied and for more subversive career than simply lambasting Ireland’s most famously […]
What a year. Like a lot of eras, 2020 doesn’t fit easily into pre-defined calendar definitions. Did the 19th century end in in 1900 or 1914? Did the World Wars end in 1945 or 1989? The 20th century certainly came to a close on September 11, 2001, or was that just America? And 2020 probably began with the first Democratic […]
The punk ethos was designed to implode, and implode it did (or should have, anyway). Punk was a fiery rejection of the status quo. Once it became status quo, it was time to go. But like a dinner guest you don’t know is dead, punk refused to leave. The problem came with confusing the idea that talent and technique weren’t […]