May 2012
4 posts
“It’s funny, the Toto IV [cassette] — the one with ‘Rosanna’...”
– Dashboard Confessional’s John Lefler talks tapes. I’m pretty obsessed with figuring out how the ways in which we listen to music changes along with the mediums we use to listen, but this super true observation of cassette-listening quirks escaped me until now. There’s a reason the...
On the 22nd Anniversary of My Best Friend's Death
I.
I spent the first fourteen years of my life without ever really knowing how it felt to be loved unconditionally, without ever feeling like I was a part of something bigger, without any indication that the rest of my life would be any less lonely than those first fourteen years. I didn’t know there was any other way: For as long as I could remember, my mother essentially called me a...
April 2012
3 posts
March 2012
4 posts
WatchThe other night I tweeted something about Clams Casino being a “breakbeat Slowdive,” so tonight while I was going through my samples and acapellas, I decided to make a track that aims to find out what a breakbeat Slowdive might sound like with Liam Gallagher on vocals. I’m not sure how I got from A to B on that one either, but surprisingly, the early prognosis is quite promising!...
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February 2012
3 posts
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“The Promise Ring’s zippiest, poppiest numbers predictably went over the best...”
– Bizarrely, Rolling Stone seems surprised that the Promise Ring’s Milwaukee audience “even” reacted enthusiastically to a Texas is the Reason reference, perhaps forgetting that our bands were as attached to the hip as two bands could be — touring together, releasing a split 7-inch...
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January 2012
9 posts
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“No matter how long you work, it’s always going to end sometime. And...”
– Keith Haring, Rolling Stone (August 10, 1989). The clarity with which Haring closes this interview is both inspiring and tragic. I do think we’re a death-fixated culture — ours is an obsession that fuels rigid religiosities, notions of “legacy” and monolithic identities, and the...
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“When I was a young piano student I got so caught up in the seriousness of...”
– Eve Barlow’s The Problem With Music Critics is the most salient piece of music writing that you missed in 2011.
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December 2011
8 posts
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Vol. 1 Brooklyn presents: The Greatest 3-Minute... →
perpetua:
I will be participating in this event tonight at Brooklyn Based in Greenpoint along with luminaries such as Maura Johnston, Norman Brannon, Jessica Suarez, Daphne Carr and Mark Yarm! Please come out if you can.
I’m going on early, so I have plenty of time to ruin anyone’s Internet perceptions of me!
Also, while I’m still working on the actual substance, I decided...
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The Death of a Music Writer: A 20-Year Exit...
This essay is longer than most, but it was important for me to write.
I. 1991–1993
Three weeks ago I handed in my final music column for Towleroad. In the weeks before that, I contacted anyone who still paid me to write about music and told them I wasn’t accepting any more work. As of today, I have one more invoice to file — for about $800 — and as soon as that check is cut and cashed,...
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“Imagine you’re in a band, and when you played shows, people were...”
– I could listen to Ian MacKaye all day, forever.
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November 2011
4 posts
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My Mortifying Month →
I’m blogging this as a link because I’m not sure I’ve ever read a (thoughtful) essay about this topic before. The overarching thesis, then, being:
Somehow, amazingly, I had written 1200 words for a magazine, and the only thing I’d managed to clearly convey was the exact thing I didn’t believe, and was making a point of not saying.
What makes this especially interesting to me...
October 2011
14 posts
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“Today, one vision of how America works is that it’s an even game, that anybody...”
– Elizabeth Warren, from a new profile in Vanity Fair well worth reading.
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“We all know the classic scene from cartoons: the cat reaches a precipice, but it...”
– Slavoj Žižek at Occupy Wall Street: Where critical theory meets real life.
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JD Samson, Rawkblog, and the 99 Percent.
rawkblog:
This JD Samson HuffPo piece:
“I’m really surprised I haven’t made very much money by being a modestly popular underground rock musician! Rent is expensive in Brooklyn! I’m being financially persecuted because I’m queer, an undoubtedly true fact but one I will present no evidence in this column to prove or generate sympathy about! Um, Occupy Wall...
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“We don’t believe in a small America. We don’t believe in the kind of smallness...”
– Barack Obama: He still gives good speech.
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September 2011
10 posts
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