Lee Ranaldo @ Landlocked Music

Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth is touring in support of his new (& first full?) solo album, and appeared for a free performance and reading at our estimable local record/music store Landlocked Music.  The cool hook of the visit was that it was promised that Ranaldo would do a reading of a poem, ‘Bloomington Indiana [...]

“Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror:” Camus probably wished he was Milton too or whatever

I just discovered (via this neat online comic by Lewis) this excellent song about artistic self-doubt.  Singer-songwriter Jeffrey Lewis tells the story of the time he thinks he saw Will Oldham on the subway in Brooklyn. I kinda thought I was gonna grow up to do stuff that would benefit humanity But it’s getting harder [...]

Jonathan Richman and the eternal “Boston”/”New York” dialectic

We caught Jonathan Richman at the tiny (capacity 100 or so?) Bishop last night. My first “rock show” ever was Richman at a folk club in Harvard Square (am forgetting the name, long gone… oh, Jonathan Swift’s!) in probably 1983, after he released the great Jonathan Sings! which was in effect his comeback album after [...]

“Singing religious songs and getting the words wrong”: Withered Hand

The other record I’ve been crazy about lately is Good News by Withered Hand, a.k.a. a father of two from Edinburgh with a Moldy Peaches poster on his wall named Dan Willson.  It’s pretty easy to describe the album: it sounds a whole lot like early If You’re Feeling Sinister-period Belle & Sebastian; his voice [...]

Dana Spiotta’s *Stone Arabia*: a musical tree falling in the woods

The one other novel I read in the midst of my Classic Doorstops was Dana Spiotta’s new Stone Arabia (link to Amazon where it’s for sale for less than $14).  This was also my first Kindle book purchase of over $1.99 or so.  I have to say that the whole Kindle (on iPad) experience was [...]

Vampire Weekend, Lil Jon, the Dalai Lama, & the Oxford Comma: a fuller consideration

You have probably by now heard all about this week’s dust-up, kerfuffle, brouhaha, call it what you will, about the Oxford Comma: By Associated Press, Published: June 30 LONDON — A report that Oxford University had changed its comma rule left some punctuation obsessives alarmed, annoyed, and distraught. Passions subsided as the university said the news [...]

“My mind is like a switchboard:” Poly Styrene R.I.P.

I was sad to hear of the death from breast cancer yesterday of Marianne Joan Elliot-Said, a.k.a. Poly Styrene, at the age of 53. Nitsuh Abebe has a nice piece about Styrene (and her death) on the New York Magazine blog. Styrene was the singer for X-Ray Spex, whose 1978 album Germ-Free Adolescents I discovered [...]

Budos Band & Charles Bradley rectify the situation

Some of the Daptone Records gang came to town on Friday. I had not heard of Charley Bradley, and so was happy to learn when we arrived that he was another Daptone recording artist who’d be singing with members of the Budos Band. He was great!  A very affecting performance.  Bradley was born in Brooklyn [...]

Heathens: Belief & Believing in the Drive-by Truckers

I finally saw the Drive-by Truckers live at the Bluebird a couple nights ago.   Great show! In a usefully thorough recent overview piece, Robert Christgau dubs them “the most productive good band on the planet” since 1998.  It’s not as catchy as “the only band that matters” or something like that, but there is something [...]

“You Can Never Quarantine the Past:” Pavement Redux

Reports from the Pavement reunion tour have been sending me down memory lane.   I must obnoxiously boast that I think I saw one of Pavement’s first few shows ever.  Or at least outside of Stockton?   This must have been the summer of 1989 when I was back in Cambridge after my junior year of college. [...]