According to Courtney Barnett, “Keep On” was a song she practiced every night when touring Europe last year. The stellar singer-songwriter took fellow Australians and label-mates Loose Tooth on tour with her and became enamored with one of their songs, … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Courtney Barnett, “Keep On”
Sometimes in pop culture there are clear end points, and — effective or not — they can provide insights to a whole series, oeuvre, or discography. I think it’s reasonable to say that the last time a daily newspaper comic … Continue reading Last Call — Calvin and Hobbes
Hagazussa (Lukas Feigelfeld, 2019). An oily stew of a movie that has some aromas familiar from Robert Eggers’s The Witch, this German horror film is set in the verdant, unforgiving mountain in the fifteenth century. An odd, withdrawn woman named Albrun (Aleksandra Cwen) … Continue reading Playing Catch-Up — Hagazussa; The Whip Hand; Gloria Bell
Since great television comedy always begins with the script, this series of posts considers the individual episodes that have claimed the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series over the years. Cheers starts with an underage drinking … Continue reading Golden Words — Cheers, “Give Me a Ring Sometime”
These posts are about the songs that just barely failed to cross the key line of chart success, entering the Billboard Top 40. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 41. Rick James traveled a long, rutted road … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Near Misses — “Mary Jane”
632. Santana, Marathon (1979) In many respects, the shifting trends of rock music in the late nineteen-seventies probably felt very accommodating to guitarist Carlos Santana. A master craftsman with his guitar, Santana had major hits with hard rock music as … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #632 to #629
Angels in East Texas by Wes Ferguson Part reporting, part reminiscence and reflection, Wes Ferguson writes about the staging of Tony Kushner’s widely acknowledged masterpiece, Angels in America, at an East Texas college in the late nineteen-nineties. Validating a stereotype … Continue reading Outside Reading — Scene I: The End of October edition
Because sometimes nothing sounds quite as good as big ol’, messed up, slap and bash rock ‘n’ roll. The Deadbeat Bang of Heartbreak City, the new album from Beach Slang, releases January 10, 2020. Continue reading This Week’s Model — Beach Slang, “Bam Rang Rang”
I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. I bought Watchmen, the limited series written by Alan Moore and … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. If there was any … Continue reading Laughing Matters — League of Extraordinary Freelancers
