Very few things are more nauseating in music discussions to me than these fetal claims that Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) is the only good Wu-Tang album or that it somehow single-handedly negates the importance of all their other work. This is a legendary group, world renowned and respected (even on the Big L album, … Read more“My Harebrained Attempt to Defeat 36 Chambers Favoritism in One Blog Post”
After a 12-year break from album releases, indie rock giants The Dismemberment Plan returned in 2013 with Uncanney Valley, a largely acoustic collection of light-hearted, lyrically-minded rock songs. I think I burned the CD from the library or something along those lines and found the LP infinitely rewarding — solid and energetic all the way … Read more“Uncanney Valley Would Be the First Dismemberment Plan Vinyl I’d Get”
After college, I was kind of forced to move out west. My mom and sister had relocated out there and I couldn’t find anyone to live with back here in the Midwest. On the way out, driving in my shi**y little Honda Civic, I remember rolling into this gas station around the Indiana/Illinois state border … Read more“Dolby’s Rupees: Califone – ‘3 Legged Animals’”
{excerpt from my unpublished book On Rock Music within the 1990s} .. Eric Wilson’s bass is the alpha male. Bradley Nowell’s voice is incandescent, voluminous, damaged, almost feminine. The track opens with a spliced, stuttered and generally bamboozling drum beat. Michael “Miguel” Happoldt handles the mix and this is garage rock reggae, sans horns, to … Read more“Chapter 3: On Sublime, The ’90s’ Misunderstood Problem Child”
Now, of course, the primary culprit here is America, itself, which initiated this imperially minded stew and which generally housed the widespread, racially-tinged riots of 1968, the results of MLK’s assassination. The city of Boston was caught in the middle of this madness in a way that especially pertains to Dolby Disaster: a James Brown … Read more“Boston’s Racism Problem Might Stem from James Brown’s Decidedly Opulent 1968 Ultimatum”
I’m working lunches these days at a restaurant called Bob’s 19th Hole, which is located about two miles south of Elbel Golf Course, a little west of South Bend. The place does exorbitant business — I’ll have days where I’ll patty up 150 burgers, just to replenish the diner’s supply for one day. It consistently … Read more“Michiana is Ready for Umphrey’s McGee on Sunny 101.5”
I used to work in this dance club, for a while, cooking in the kitchen. It was a Brothers, actually, a chain with which some of you Midwesterners might be familiar. So I’d have to work the closing shift, usually, which meant hanging out there until after two in the morning, catering to any drunken … Read more“I Can Hear a Rapist”
“Literature of the 1960s” is a class I remember seeing as a selection at Indiana University for the fall 2003 semester, a session during which I think I ended up not taking any English classes. This might have been caused by schedule constraints. I do remember, though, bandying the idea about of the class to … Read more“It Looks Like Our ‘Literature of the 1960s’ Class at IU Might Have Been a Myth”
I just made kind of a funny observation, if you don’t mind: it seems that after pretty much every economic recession, there follows a fashion “advancement” that entails women baring more anatomy, as a general trend in society. Most recently, we had the propagation of yoga pants as a token of civil assimilation, in 2012, … Read more“Phil Collins and The Cure as a Sort of Comical Demise and Resuscitation of Modern Pop Culture”
It’s funny to think about but it’s actually very, very rare to find a rock band hit it big and also adhere, as a rule, to a calm, or narcotic, disposition in their music. The Beatles were perky, The Rolling Stones confrontational, Nirvana prone to peeling the paint off the walls and Led Zeppelin delivering … Read more“Phish Seemed to Make Playfulness an Ideal on ‘Roggae’”