Torture Porn Lit

Just read Heartsick by Chelsea Cain which I picked up looking for something else because, I think, Amazon named it the top thriller of 2007.
I didn’t altogether enjoy it — it seemed derivative (of Silence of the Lambs, although it does have the wit tacitly to acknowledge the debt when the psycho killer mockingly refers [...]

Hüsker Dü

Emusic recently got the rights to the Husker Du catalogue which I’m pretty sure was also previously not available on iTunes.  Who do they think they are, the Beatles?  Anyway, good news even if you have to DL entire albums, can’t cherrypick songs, which disappointed me because I always saw Zen Arcade as a bit [...]

Music Roundup: Franco, Jay Reatard, Pains of Being Pure at Heart…

A few things I’ve been listening to…
Modest Mouse, “3rd Planet.”  This is from Modest Mouse’s major-label debut The Moon and Antarctica (2000), their third album, which didn’t really make too big of a splash at the time — their commercial breakthrough came with the next album and the big Pixies-ish hit “Float On.”  One thing [...]

Juliana Hatfield memoir

I got around to reading the Juliana Hatfield memoir When I Grow Up.  I read the Dean Wareham one recently (Black Postcards) too. The two books feel like they constitute a minor wave of memoirs of 1990s semi/almost rock stardom.  Wareham (of Galaxie 500 and Luna) and Hatfield both had comparable experiences as indie stars [...]

My Dinosaur Jr. problem

Went to see Dinosaur Jr. last night.  They’re touring with the full original lineup, including Lou Barlow, whose bitter split with J. Mascis constituted one of indie rock’s best-known melodramas back in the 90s.  (It’s compellingly chronicled in Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life.) Now almost 20 years on (!), after various kinds [...]

Mountain Goats in Bloomington

Went to see the Mountain Goats.  If you don’t know them, the Mountain Goats is John Darnielle, a literate Pitzer College grad, former emergency room nurse, who used to record very primitive songs on boom boxes but since 2002 or so has been producing more polished, “produced” (even orchestral) music.  He tends towards the ambitious [...]

Todd Snider, Tree huggin’ lazy-ass hippie

Todd Snider seems to come to town every year around spring break for two nights of shows, and I’ve always missed him, but finally caught him last night.  Snider is in his early 40s and has been playing for almost 20 years; is from Portland Oregon originally, started his career in Austin as a devotee [...]

Genius of Mark Gormley

Have recently discovered the amazing and certainly not gormless Pensacola, Florida sensation Mark Gormley, of the haunting falsetto, jutting hip stance, inexplicable video animation and mise en scene, and trademark pleated jeans, golf shirts (what does he have in the pocket?), and upper chest band-aid. Here’s a useful overview of the career that [...]

Ian Curtis/ Kurt Cobain

Watched the Anton Corbijn biopic of Ian Curtis (Joy Division’s singer who committed suicide in 1980 at age 23), Control.  Enjoyed it a lot.  The musical performances, all recorded by the actors, are pretty uncannily good and Sam Riley is a dead ringer for Curtis.  If they toured as the Unknown Pleasures, a Joy [...]

Lux Interior R.I.P.

Lux Interior (born Erick Lee Purkhiser), who formed the “psychobilly” combo the Cramps with his wife Poison Ivy in 1973, is dead at age 62.
I didn’t know that he grew up on Akron, OH. Were the Cramps at all part of the whole 70s Akron scene (with Devo, the Bizarros, Rubber City Rebels), or [...]