Song of the Day: “Kimberly”
Multi-talented artist and writer Patti Smith has influenced groups disparate as Sonic Youth, R.E.M., and Madonna. Her seminal 1975 album Horses helped to spur the early punk movement in New York City. Smith was…
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Max Gray
260 posts
Read more of Max Gray at Big City Sasquatch or follow him on Twitter @City_Sasquatch. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Encounters, Mount Hope, Conte, tNY.press, and English Kills Review. He co-hosts the etymology podcast Words For Dinner and is a graduate of the Rutgers-Newark MFA program.
The Web Isn’t Nirvana (But You Can Get All Their Albums For Free)
On February 26, 1995, just about twenty years ago, Newsweek published an article by Clifford Stoll called “Why the Internet Won’t Be Nirvana.” In it, Stoll provides a litany of…
Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, sacrifice is the key to artistic growth in Grant Snider’s “Creative Processor.” And in the Saturday Essay, Amanda Miska realizes she is making the object of her love into a…
Song of the Day: “Mickey Mouse Boarding House”
Mardi Gras may have been last week, but the good times keep on rolling. New Orleans-based soul artist Walter “Wolfman” Washington knows a thing or two about good times—in his…
Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Grant Snider provides some (mostly) encouraging words in “One Page At A Time.” Prompted by author Colleen McCullough’s shallow-minded obituary in the Guardian, Tabitha Blankenbiller uses the Saturday Essay for…
Song of the Day: “Fall On Me”
The pioneering alternative rock band R.E.M. officially disbanded in 2011, after more than 30 years making music that defied description. Allegedly, singer Michael Stipe chose the band’s name in 1980…
Weekend Rumpus Roundup
In the Saturday Essay, Kenny Ng evaluates the groundbreaking show Transparent and its attempt to raise awareness of transgender and genderqueer identities. In the show, Arrested Development’s Jeffrey Tambor plays…
Song of the Day: “Never Over You”
Critics have described indie singer-songwriter Natalie Prass variously as “stunning,” “sublime,” “charmingly delicate,” and also, bizarrely, as a Disney princess. The Nashville-based former Berklee College of Music student offers up a…
Weekend Rumpus Roundup
First, Grant Snider has some helpful suggestions for forgetful readers. In the Saturday Essay, Melissa Carroll investigates the surprising cultural phenomenon known as the “brony,” a species of lovable man-child…
Song of the Day: “One For My Baby”
The canon of drinking songs is long and storied, but no one sang about booze with quite as much acumen as legendary imbiber Frank Sinatra. At a seminal live performance…
Weekend Rumpus Roundup
Gentrification, and analogies for it, are the focus of Mary Biddinger’s poetry collection A Sunny Place With Adequate Water, reviewed by Danielle Susi. The inhumanity of coin-operated machinery serves as a theme.…
Song of the Day: “It Never Entered My Mind”
By now Miles Davis has become a cornerstone of modern music. We can’t get rid of him, which is good, because we would never want to. Miles Davis is inside us;…