swinging modern sounds
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Swinging Modern Sounds #20: Who’s Afraid of Serious Music?
Once, many years ago, I was at an artist’s colony in New Hampshire, The MacDowell Colony. I could never spend much time at MacDowell without suffering with paralyzing loneliness, and this visit was no exception.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #19: One Recent Example of Talent
“Talent” is from the Greek for a certain weight of gold, because, I suppose, people who had a lot of it seemed to be metaphorically wealthy. Here’s one example I encountered recently:
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Swinging Modern Sounds #18: Some Questions About the Tradition
Johnny Cash’s late covers are superior to their original recordings, but are they traditional?
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Swinging Modern Sounds #17: Higher Love
Recently, I was given an assignment by Rumpus film critic and friend Ryan Boudinot to write about one of those pieces of music that is so execrable, so thoroughly gangrenous, that it’s nearly impossible to figure out why anyone would…
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Swinging Modern Sounds #16: Indeterminate Activity
Lovers of contemporary experimental music will likely remember the moment in the early eighties when John Cage, the godfather of minimalism and of most New York City experimental music, referred to Glenn Branca (he of the pieces for ensembles of…
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Swinging Modern Sounds #15: On Technique
In popular music circles, these days, very good instrumental technique is often considered bad form.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #14: Nine Thousand Words On The Size Queens
The following is a record review in dialogue form conducted between this columnist and Michael Snediker (with whom I corresponded about Antony and the Johnsons a couple months back), the poet and literary critic. We were shooting for ten thousand…
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Swinging Modern Sounds #13: On Loops
These lines depend on your having a working knowledge of the New York City suburbs.
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Swinging Modern Sounds #9: The Means of Production
Makers and consumers of music, there is no other conclusion but that the future of the medium lies in your hands.