Swinging Modern Sounds #44: And Another Day
David Bowie, who isn’t doing press for his new album The Next Day, provides Rick Moody with a workflow diagram for the album. A Rumpus exclusive.
...moreDavid Bowie, who isn’t doing press for his new album The Next Day, provides Rick Moody with a workflow diagram for the album. A Rumpus exclusive.
...moreThey Might Be Giants had that quality, the glorious-about-human-life quality on December 30th
...moreBands, those funny little plans, that never go quite right, is a line from a really great song by Mercury Rev (“Holes,” from Deserter’s Songs), a song that rightly probes the mixed feelings that you might have about bands had you ever tried to imagine a band into being.
...moreFrom June through December of 2012, I kept a diary of musical impressions that didn’t develop into longer pieces.
...moreIn this piece, we are not at any time meant to use the word greatness to refer to a band from Boston, Big Dipper, best known during the late eighties
...moreWe’re releasing half the songs from T Cooper’s musical album, a collection of (mostly) original songs by (entirely) original artists–all inspired by specific chapters in his new book, REAL MAN ADVENTURES.
Today’s release is by Rocco Katastrophe.
...moreAt Sidesplitter, Ben Worcester shines light on John Lurie’s art and his campy yet emblematic ‘90s tv show, Fishing With John, where he interviewed celebrities while casting a line.
“Stuff that happened in the filming was 90% improvised. The narration took a while to write while we were editing.
...moreIf you did not come of age as a listener to the popular song between 1975 and 1979, you cannot entirely understand the revolution that took place among women.
...moreCuddle Magic, in my opinion, is the band most likely to succeed, these days, if by succeed you mean getting a leg up, surpassing the modest touring-all-the-time-not-making-very-much-money-hustling-constantly model of the thing.
...moreIn March 2012, I published a letter as part of a subscription program begun at The Rumpus. The following poem is fashioned from language contained in the responses to that letter.
...moreWhat is the impact on the human condition when we expect to have everything we want, whenever we want it?
So asks Zach Rogue in the first issue of Radio Silence. This is the question that will define my generation, and a question that I have struggled with for my entire adult life.
...moreThe Rumpus has made it possible for me to talk to a lot of musicians I might not otherwise have met, but meeting Mike Watt, founding member of The Minutmen, fIREHOSE, Dos, etc., has to be the most memorable encounter that has come to pass since I began writing this column three years ago.
...moreThe band Aeroplane Pageant and novelist, musician and Rumpus contributor Rick Moody have collaborated on a new version of a song from the band’s recent album, Float Above the Yard. Moody’s remix of the song “Big Little Wolfs” is ambient and drifting without being lulling, a place (near the docks) as much as a song.
...moreThe Believer will present Laurel Nakadate’s The Wolf Knife at the IFC Center on Monday, April 9th at 8pm. The screening, which celebrates the release of The Believer’s new film issue, will be followed by a conversation between Nakadate and Rumpus columnist Rick Moody.
...moreWe’re ending the week with a big ol’ Rumpus bang. Steve Almond kicked off a brand-new column, THE WEEK IN GREED. Plus, Rick Moody is back in action with a new SWINGING MODERN SOUNDS. Hooray!
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For an entire decade, between 1975 and 1985, Brian Eno could do no wrong. In fact, even for the four or five years before 1975 he could do no wrong.
Aarhus, Denmark, is the second largest city in that nation after Copenhagen, and a center of the arts and education. I was recently there for a literary festival,
Like other people who once had a childhood, I sometimes give in to fits of longing for the music I cared most about when young. In particular, I give in to reunion fever.
It’s hard not to think a lot about Tucson lately, a place where I have spent a lot of time in the last five years, and which I have written about multiply on this site already. (See, e.g., my columns of January 29 and August 28, 2009.) Not long ago I was visiting there and met up briefly with Vicki Brown, a violinist of whom I have written above.
Nick Delany turned up at a reading I gave at the Brooklyn Museum in November of 2010. He remarked, during the question and answer portion of the event, that he had mostly been reading just one book for the last ten years.
On 11/29, a band in Brooklyn called The Universal Thump staged a fortieth anniversary rehabilitation of George Harrison’s monumental All Things Must Pass album.

I met Lauren (whose last name we are suppressing here) at a writing workshop in Provincetown almost fifteen years ago. She was shy, funny, brilliant, and very, very talented, and she dressed like one of those kids who had been to every show that Mission of Burma ever played.
This week in New York Judah Friedlander does Karate, Ian Frazier joins the FDG Reading Series, The Word Made Flesh celebrates in Brooklyn, James Franco takes a stab at writing, Rick Moody battles, Amy Sedaris is The Sound of Young America, Love and Other Drugs is this week’s MOVIE PICK, and a CMJ Music Marathon rocks your Saturday.
This week in New York David Grossman translates with Paul Auster, Justin Taylor and Eva Tamladge exhibit tattoos for the literary inclined, Tao Lin reads, Guernica celebrates, Bill Bryson is Private, Rick Moody joins the Sunday Salon, Catfish is the SATURDAY MOVIE PICK, and James Frey combines Dante, literature, and ART.
Rumpus Book Club member and artist extraordinaire Kevin Thomas on reading The Four Fingers of Death and dog sitting:
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In an interview with Big Think, Rumpus columnist Rick Moody says Writers are more “desperate” than they used to be, and, fearing they won’t be published at all, are trying to fit their writing into ever-more-rigid conventional contemporary formats.
“My former students who are out there now trying to get published are having trouble on those lines,” says Moody.
...moreWe’re sure you’ve been anticipating Rick Moody’s The Four Fingers of Death (out today) as much as we have, but in case you have some catching up to do, here’s a round-up of the reviews:
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In New York this week Rick Moody kicks off his book tour, BOMB Magazine hosts its Summer Bash at Glasslands, Black Keys perform at Summer Stage, Anderbo.com hosts Anderbo Indoors, Sandra Bernhard in Shel Silverstein’s Hamlet, Joseph O’Neill, Nicholas Christopher and Rachel Shukert read, and Paul Dano and Kevin Kline in The Extra Man.
“All you book sluts are the same,” says Nick’s mother as I reveal that I too am an English major. This comes as we sit in his empty apartment, smoking cigarettes before he goes back home, one day before he rides back into town, bored with home, and pops back by my place to talk about books.
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