16. Pretenders, Pretenders (1979) Chrissie Hynde had every reason to believe that a career in rock ‘n’ roll simply wasn’t going to work out for her. The native of Akron, Ohio had kicked around on the fringes of the music … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #16
Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America by Will Bunch Until the mainstream news media comes to its collective senses and starts reporting with proper alarm on the Republican party’s cult-like adherence to despotic tendencies, writers … Continue reading Outside Reading — Burying the Lead edition
“Getting Bitter,” the new track from New Jersey–based band Teenage Halloween, is a chewy, chunky blast of pop punk. It call to mind the Beths when they’re in a louder mode, and that includes in the way the bouncy music … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Teenage Halloween, “Getting Bitter”
CABLE TIES All Her Plans (Poison City/Merge) — The Melbourne, Australia trio Cable Ties comes into their third album with a fine fury. All Her Plans opens with “Crashing Through,” which skews close enough to vintage Sleater-Kinney to flap anyone’s … Continue reading Medium Rotation — All Her Plans; I Inside the Old Year Dying
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. By the middle of the twenty-tens, I had mostly stopped paying attention to movie posters. This was … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — Moonlight movie poster
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. To understand how distinctly unique Malcolm … Continue reading Golden Words — Malcolm in the Middle, “Pilot”
The Great Buster: A Celebration (Peter Bogdanovich, 2018). Rarely has a director been more in their element than Peter Bogdanovich is with this documentary survey of the life and career of Buster Keaton. The film features the requisite interviews with … Continue reading Now Playing — The Great Buster: A Celebration; X Y & ZEE; A Love Song
17. Thomas Dolby, The Golden Age of Wireless (1982) Upon its initial release, Thomas Dolby’s debut album had different track listings for its U.K. and U.S. versions. This was hardly an uncommon practice in the nineteen-eighties. What stands out all … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #17
New College is a warning about the price of populist incompetence by Don Moynihan Watching Republicans continue to savage the U.S. education system in every way they can think of, I’m reminded of George Carlin’s long-ago explanation for why this … Continue reading Outside Reading — Lower Learning edition
I suspect Billy Bragg was inspired to pick up his guitar by the laughable corollary drawn between the current #1 song in U.S. and the work of Woody Guthrie, a comparison made solely by right-wing ghouls operating with their usual … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Billy Bragg, “Rich Men Earning North of a Million”
