A couple of weeks back, a friend of mine was kind enough to share some airtime with me. After participating in the reunion weekend for my old college radio station two years runnings, I decided I was up for swinging … Continue reading From the Archive — Pleased to Meet Me
This is it, friends. This is exactly what 1980 sounded like. The single “Girls Are Always Right,” from the U.K. new wave band Any Trouble, has some Joe Jackson to it. And Elvis Costello, and Graham Parker, and Marshall Crenshaw. … Continue reading One for Friday — Any Trouble, “Girls Are Always Right”
I remember when Stephen King’s novel It was first published, in 1986. Then only a dozen years into his career as a novelist — but already claiming nearly twenty books to his credit — King was an unstoppable force in … Continue reading Now Playing: It
The books are massive, which makes them intimidating. Just glancing at one of the spines, likely wide enough to place a comfortably discernible portrait on it, is enough to tingle up a feeling of exhaustion. And yet one of the … Continue reading My Writers: Robert Caro
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. When I started reading superhero comics, I had only a passing … Continue reading My Misspent Youth — Marvel Team-Up Annual #7 by Louise Simonson and Paul Neary
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. This snippet of a … Continue reading Laughing Matters — George Carlin, “It’s the old American double standard….”
3. Love and Rockets, “No New Tale to Tell” “This was our ‘getting it together in the countryside’ acoustic album,” David J wrote on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Earth, Sun, Moon, the 1987 release from Love and … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 3
As Battle of the Sexes makes its initial, limited-engagement foray into theaters this weekend, I double-checked the filmography of co-directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, figuring that I’d been largely tuning out their work since their feature debut, Little Miss Sunshine, … Continue reading From the Archive: Little Miss Sunshine
When I spent time in the broadcast booth at various college radio stations, one of the finest gifts that came with it was the chance to flip through the ever-changing batch of new music that sat on the shelf. It … Continue reading One for Friday — The Magic Numbers, “This Love”
In the best way, Grizzly Bear makes music that nags at me. Although there’s the occasional track that is immediately arresting — “Yet Again,” from 2012’s Shields, for example — but my predominant experience with the group’s music is one … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Painted Ruins
Coffee for Two 