Before I get to the concert, I want to mention that yesterday was a gorgeous 75 degree day, and we’re currently on spring break, so I thought it apt to get outside and do what I like to do outside, which is play basketball. The fact that I’m borderline freakishly tall (6′6″) means that, [...]

A jaundiced figure floats across the screen. He is constantly searching for things to eat. We are looking at a neo-Marxist parable of late capitalism. He is the pure consumer. With his obsessively gaping maw, he clearly wants only one thing: to feel whole, at peace with himself. He [...]

I have absolutely no idea how musical trends get started, but I’m not a huge fan of a recent one, in the female indie rock vocal realm. You know what I’m talking about–that alternately delicate and dangerous, is-she-formally-trained or just extraordinarily passionate type of thing that touches upon the best vocal qualities of Nico, Rickie [...]

First things first–greatest video of the 1980s, hands down. Hands up, too. Our man Herbie, who never shied away from trying something new (which unfortunately led to this), dipped his toe, and Godley and Creme dipped some prosthetic limbs, into the nascent realm of electronic industrial hip-hop, to stunning result. The music [...]

I plan on giving away within this essay large elements of the plot of this film. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend you do so before reading this.
Halfway through Inside Man, Madeline White (Jodie Foster), a mysterious go-to woman for those in power who need to get things done quietly and efficiently, enters [...]

Nikki Sudden, of Swell Maps and later of Jacobites and then simply of Nikki Sudden, passed on early yesterday morning. Over here for discussion and encomia. Over here for live on WFMU a week ago.

“New York” (mp3)

While waiting in line for the first of what would be many beers at Bloomington’s Second Story on Friday evening, I asked the bartender if he knew in which order the bands, Head of Femur and The Mendoza Line, would be playing. He didn’t know, but the girl in line behind me did, and [...]

I knew that at one point the word verification thing needed to post comments through Blogger would offer up something fun—after all, it’s just a combination of letters, and logic dictates that eventually they’re bound to combine in interestingly pronounceable ways. Thus, I give you, from a recent comment I posted, the neologism [...]

As if I didn’t have enough reason to absolutely love YouTube before now, its latest preservation piece is ample evidence to permanently avow my devotion. You’ve probably already seen it—Mobile, Alabama’s NBC affiliate sent a crew to a working class, overwhelmingly black neighborhood to investigate a rumor of, well, a leprechaun in a tree.
But [...]

It’s been now 15 years since pop music’s greatest Gallic decadent passed from this mortal coil, and it appears that it might be time for Serge Gainsbourg to receive some much-needed due on this side of the Atlantic. July will see the release on Verve Forecast of the tribute compilation Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited, with the [...]