Music
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Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB by Jaime Lowe
“A nigga don’t come out of jail and get his toes done,” ODB is quoted in a new biography, as he pointed out the earth-tones and the feng-shui waterfall in a manicure parlor. “How are the kids gonna feel about…
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The Dead Kennedys Punk Humor
Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde . . . Jello Biafra?! The Dead Kennedys’ acerbic frontman deserves to be placed in such rarefied comedic company by virtue of the three-minute satirical missiles he fired off during his band’s reign of…
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The Way I Am, by Eminem
Eminem’s memoir, The Way I Am, borrows its title from his 2000 single about the over-the-top trappings of fame, in which he vents: “I’m racin’, I’m pacin’, I stand and I sit/And I’m thankful for every fan that I get/But…
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The Only Band that Mattered
Antonino D’Ambrosio remembers his time with Joe Strummer and reflects on the great band’s definitive new book THE CLASH “I wanted to be Pete Townsend, the bloke who throws his arms and jumps up and down.” Paul Simonon
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Swinging Modern Sounds #3: Time Has Done This To Me
I think it was in 1986 or thereabouts that my friend Jim Lewis gave me a bootlegged cassette of a live radio appearance by Peter Holsapple and Syd Straw (with, I think, Ilene Markell, on bass and backing vocals–all of…
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Swinging Modern Sounds #2: A Post Somewhat About Jazz
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…
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How Western Pop Music is Being Used as ‘Touchless Torture’ by the American military
From Frieze Magazine: “As reported by the BBC, the Guardian, the Associated Press, Newsweek, The Nation, Mother Jones, SPIN and others (while mocked by right-wing columnists from the Chicago Tribune and The New York Sun), Western pop music has been…
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Swinging Modern Sounds #1: A New Blog by Rick Moody
Introduction Everybody 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…