Posts by author
Max Gray
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Song of the Day: “Try Me”
The resilient R&B singer Esther Mae Jones adopted the stage name of Little Esther Philips at the age of 14, allegedly taking it from a gas station sign in Los Angeles. She had a rough-and-tumble career, a tumultuous relationship with the…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
For Days 11 and 12 of National Poetry Month, we have work from Aziza Barnes and Daniel Priest. Aziza Barnes’s innovative poem, “How To Purchase A Flight,” subverts the experience of purchasing an airline ticket to question her biracial cousin’s opportunism.…
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Song of the Day: “Shoo Fly Marches On”
The distinctive drum beat behind The Meters’ funky classic “Hey Pocky A-Way” did not originate there. In fact, their influential drummer, Joseph “Ziggy” Modeliste, first came up with the beat when he recorded “Shoo Fly Marches On” for Dr. John’s…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
To start, love gets metaphorically steam cleaned by Grant Snider. Brandon Hicks adds his two cents with “The Hierarchy” of artistic and literary achievement. Meanwhile, Oliver Bendorf experiments with line and repetition in “Both/Both” and joy greets Katherine Ossip in…
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Song of the Day: “Hey Pocky A-Way”
The loose and infectious melody of “Hey Pocky A-Way” has been covered and re-recorded many times since its first release in 1974 by New Orleans funk heavyweights The Meters. The highly recognizable chorus–which reputedly stems from early Native American dialects…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Grant Snider wonders, in cartoon form, what happens to lost ideas. Then, in the Saturday Essay, Britney Spears superfan Sarah Sansolo admits that the Britney critics “were right about some things.” In the “pre-Glee dark ages” of the early 2000s,…
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Song of the Day: “I Left My Wallet In El Segundo”
Road trip songs occupy a plush seat in the American canon—right underneath the fuzzy dice. They are often harbingers of summer, and “I Left My Wallet In El Segundo” is no exception. This prototypical Tribe Called Quest track from their first album features…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
In the Saturday Essay, Scott Borchert wonders about the symbiosis of author James Agee and folklorist Harry Smith. Though it is unclear if they met in New York during the 1950s, “their works do converge —in spirit, perhaps, and not…
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Song of the Day: “Electricity (Drugs)”
The Talking Heads were among a crop of epochal, genre-bending artists that emerged from New York City in the mid-70s. The music scene centered around the famous punk club CBGB, where David Byrne and company opened for The Ramones in 1975.…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, was Jen Girdish’s first brush with Leonard Nimoy’s mortality. Nimoy’s role as the famously stoic Spock captures Girdish’s attention in the Saturday Essay and serves as a nostalgic lens through which she examines her late…
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Song of the Day: “Straight To Hell”
The Clash are famous for their album London Calling and their ubiquitous single, “Rock the Casbah,” which is notable perhaps for its incendiary political message—a denunciation of the Iranian ban on Western music following the 1979 revolution. But it’s “Straight to Hell,” a commemoration…
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Julie Marie Wade points to Tod Marshall’s skillful use of call and response in his new poetry collection, Bugle. The theme of mortality punctuates this “fierce” and “stunning” book. Marshall’s speaker, Wade writes, “contemplates what we think we know…