Posts by author
Max Gray
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Song of the Day: “Tennessee Waltz”
Every music genre shifts its boundaries over time, and soul music has done so time and time again, beginning with its heyday in the 1960s. Sam Cooke, who achieved fame first as a young gospel performer in the 40s, is often considered its inventor.…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Brandon Hicks takes an irreverent look at economic ironies in “Competitive Marketplace.” Then, setting is paramount in the Saturday Rumpus Review of Antonio Ruizpalacio’s film, Gueros. The director’s vision of Mexico City, writes Alex Norcia, symbolizes “Güeros’s struggling and disaffected youths, an external rendering…
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Song of the Day: “Strange Brew”
Since the Wu Tang Clan introduced their own version of the word in the 90s, “cream” has come to be associated with the almighty dollar bill. But the first musical act to popularize the word was probably the supergroup formed in 1966 by…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, the Rumpus exclusive video premiere of The Size Queens’s To The Country. Then, in the Saturday Review of Mad Max: Fury Road, Devin O’Neill explores the movie’s seeds of feminist thought. Though the film is undeniably brutal and violent, O’Neill highlights its anti-patriarchal implications. The story,…
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Song of the Day: “Living For The City”
Stevland Hardaway Morris, aka Stevie Wonder, got his start playing for Motown Records in 1961. Today, he boasts a back catalog of some of the most iconic and original soul music in the world. Though Stevie Wonder started singing more than…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Brandon Hicks takes an illustrative look at a few hypothetical situations. And in the Saturday interview, Anna March talks with Salon editor and author Sarah Hepola about alcoholism and the distorted worldview that comes along with it. Hepola talks movingly about her…
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Song of the Day: “Purple Rain”
Our history of rock-stars-turned-movie-actors goes back a long time, but one highlight has to be Prince’s performance in his bizarre 1984 drama, Purple Rain. Though chock full of laughably weird moments—critics dismissed the movie as “overlong,” “facile,” and a “letdown”—the film’s soundtrack…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Barbara Berman reviews Stanford academic and author Eavan Boland’s poetry collection, A Woman Without A Country, a rumination on Irish American identity, motherhood, and “literary citizenship.” Boland’s “straightforward brilliance” make this a collection worth reading. Then, in a funny and…
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Song of the Day: “Coney Island Baby”
When listening to Tom Waits’s stately ballad, “Coney Island Baby,” one pictures an ancient Italian grandfather, standing on a windswept boardwalk, boasting about his granddaughter to anyone who will listen. “When I am with her,” he rattles, “I’m the richest man in…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, in the Saturday Essay, Alana Hauser remembers the evil spirit from David Lynch’s eerie TV drama, Twin Peaks. The “parasitic” spirit, named Bob, is “a frightening reflection on the pervasive reality of male violence.” Hauser looks to the shocking ruthlessness of…
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Song of the Day: “Sunday Candy”
In an interview with XXL magazine in 2014, Chance the Rapper pointed out the complex relationship between rap music and profits. He argued: “I don’t think selling [songs] is the right way to do it. It’s more about spreading it……
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
Judy Bolton-Fasman examines her Cuban-American parents in the Saturday Essay, in particular her mother’s struggle to read Don Quijote in its original Spanish for her master’s degree. Her parents’ heritage informs their aspirations in a new country. “For my father…