Music
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The Rumpus Interview with Shawna Virago
Musician and songwriter Shawna Virago discusses her trajectory as an artist, deciding to use Kickstarter to fund her new album, and what it’s like to be top Google hit for “San Francisco dominatrix.”
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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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Swinging Modern Sounds #64: Ack! Ack! Ack! Ack!
Many of you will not want to believe that “Ack! Ack! Ack! Ack!” by the Californian punk band the Urinals, is the greatest song ever written, but that is simply because there is some kind of vise or blood-occluding mechanism…
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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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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Cultural Constellations of Agee and Smith
But who said a chronology had to be straightforward?
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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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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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Sound & Vision: Daniel Mintseris
Keyboardist and programmer Daniel Mintseris discusses his work with St. Vincent and Annie Clark, coming to the US from Lithuania at nineteen, and the difference between traditional composition and writing music on instinct using cutting-edge technology.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #63: It’s Supposed to Be Bad
Rick Moody emails with Scott Timberg, author of the new book Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class, about Bob Dylan’s new Sinatra covers album, the need for cultural gatekeepers, and the “slippery sub genre” of bad-on-purpose art.
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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 an important member of the scene which spawned punk heroes…
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The Rumpus Interview with Tyler Gartzman
Rapper Tyler Gartzman talks about getting high, hypothetically making out with George Bush, not getting laid since high school, and how a white, Jewish kid in Atlanta became a talented hip-hop wordsmith.
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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 good-humored single “Mickey Mouse Boarding House,” the silky R&B crooner complains…