It must be Biopic season, because I’ve just sat down of my own free will and watched two fictionalizations of actual events: one from my infancy, which I look on with fascination, and one from my early adulthood, which I disdain with the snobbery of a thousand dead aristocrats. The second thing, Pam & Tommy… Read More Pam and Tommy and Steve and Johnnie
Every right-thinking person should deplore Rolling Stone magazine for being a glossy nostalgia rag and corporate liberalism enabler. But every now and again one may gaze into the void and find insights. Imagine record sleeves without the advent of Hipgnosis, the photo-design company responsible for Pink Floyd‘s mysterious black prism, Led Zeppelin‘sflaxen-haired nudist children, AC/DC‘s censored everyday villains, Black… Read More Hipgnosis, and the Great Age of Album Covers
Charlie Watts died, and the articles about him were pro forma: great drummer, great bloke, much miss, wow. I briefly considered that this would be the end of them. Charlie was a founding member: how can you have the Rolling Stones without him? How silly I was. On August 4th, the band announced that Watts,… Read More The Branding Stones Roll On
At some point in the last 15 years, I stopped paying attention to popular music trends. Call it the consequence of aging: after a while, you simply lose the ability to be surprised, and you start either sitting comfortably in what you know you like, or you start exploring newer, more off-beat sounds. Either is… Read More On the Pleasures of Doom Jazz
Twitter impresario Mencius Moldbugman stomps on the Last Film in Theaters with both feet. Apparently Nolan has been utterly corrupted by his early Hollywood success and is now incapable of directing something better than mediocre (which is kind of the vibe I got from Dunkirk). Apparently Tenet is two hours of rampaging nonsense. I don’t… Read More “Tenet” is Bad, “Sound & Fury” is Good
Abandoning the old Rate My CD’s project earlier this year gave me freedom to listen to my music whenever the hell I wanted. Not having to listen to one old blues album after another, dreaming of the day I’d make it to my tiny Hip-Hop collection, was a positive pleasure. Now I can actually just… Read More In Praise of Sleater-Kinney’s “The Woods”
The ease of digital recording has made it fun to collaborate with yourself. All of these were made on Garageband, which is to say, they’re me on Guitar and bass, with drum fills borrowed. The exception is the opener, “Do Another One, Dad” which was just a series of fills created with the AuxyPro app… Read More More Noise on Bandcamp – A New Duke Bike Rider EP
As coronavirus and protests continue to disrupt the country and its economy, many have asked the best ways to support musicians who suddenly and abruptly lost their main form of income. The usual answer is “buy an album or merch” — and today (Friday, June 5) offers a rare opportunity to maximize the amount of… Bandcamp… Read More Bandcamp Is Waiving Its Share of Sales Today
I like Nada Surf. They’re a band. And I like them. I own precisely one of their records, an EP. So why do I say that I like them? Honestly, it’s because I like the name. Nada. Surf. What does it mean? The absence of surfing? A specific kind of anti-surfing? The surfing of the Great Nothing?… Read More Nada Surf and the Importance of Band Names
Sometime I create music as well. I consider them sonic doodles. Learning to play an instrument or absorb music theory feels like work. Because it’s work, and with you as your own taskmaster, inevitably you will be ridiculously lenient on yourself. So creating little sonic doodles and throwing them out on to the wild free… Read More Butterfly Figure Skater: Duke Bike Rider on Soundcloud
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