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.
...moreOften, I find, the musical experiences that have had the most lasting impact on me were not immediately apparent to me at the time.
...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
...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.
...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.
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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.
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.
Have we been overlooking sound symbolism? Recent studies have shown that humans connect certain sounds with sensory perceptions and thus, the sound of a word could hint at its meaning. This article addresses how the idea fits into theories on language and its origins.
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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.

by Rick Moody
Arthur Danto, the Columbia University philosophy professor and frequent writer on contemporary art, has often referred to this “historical present” as a time after the history of art. What he seems to mean about this, I think, is that once Warhol made the Brillo box pieces, art had come to the end of a certain historical imperative.
...moreEverybody knows the book business is in dire straits these days. The news comes in awful fusillades from the daily press. But in part the book business looks so dire right now because it has mainly been indemnified against the kinds of downturns that have afflicted other media in the digital age.
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