It was astonishing to walk into that coffee shop in Sydney and see Nic Dalton and Tom Morgan sitting there. Dalton was almost indiscernible behind a huge, heterogeneous beard, enjoying his complex coffee drink as if some religious adamancy were attaching him to it. Morgan sat opposite, and I couldn’t see his face, but a […]
Somehow, on this evening, I’m getting one of those diamond-in-the-rough feelings of squalid freedom, in my everyday life. For this occasion, as it were, the Stone Temple Pilots song “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart” popped into my head, as is perhaps appropriate: “I’m not myself / But I’m not dead and I’m […]
Here from my somewhat trenchant vantage point of northern Indiana, you might say I’ve got something to say about all points of the Midwest. Ohioans are pretty funny but too obsessed with Skyline Chili, Hoosiers are funny but sometimes kind of slow, St. Louis is gross but funny, Illinois and Wisconsin people are well-dressed, skinny […]
I remember first hearing the band Franz Ferdinand — my immediate critique was that “They sound like they’re trying to be The Strokes” [1]. Interestingly, anyway, there’s never really been a band, at least that I’ve heard, trying to do what the Franz does, which of course would be those four-on-the-floor, high-hat-up-beat, disco/techno drum beats. […]
We now bid a hearty farewell to Bob Weir, the Grateful Dead’s Robin to Garcia’s Batman, you might say, guitarist, vocalist and founding member, dearly departed at 78. Weir was known for a very clear, strong and almost macho vocal disposition, and, to an extent, certain documented exploits of womanizing (“I was born in a […]
I’m starting this new year off with a post about The Dandy Warhols, which strangely seems reasonably appropriate, in a way. They’re one of those ’90s bands that’s still kind of underrated and underexposed, you could say, with Soul Coughing, on the other hand, having recently graduated to the realm of “trendy,” and so no […]
So many summers and winters pass, eventually, on the metal bar, that all of our sins, all the dirtiness, unthinkable hopelessness and unhealthy catharsis get solidified, like cultural sediment lodging itself in our everyday landscape. It’s possible that it’s not an enterprise for the scrupulous. And when I walk into that metal bar, a bright-eyed […]