IF it weren't for the '80s Village Voice, I probably would not be a journalist. (The world, I expect, would be a better place.) This weekend I have a story in Al Jazeera America about good times and bad for alternative weeklies. I talk about the crystalline sense of mission these publications had during conservative times, and the troubles they've had more recently. And I try to shine a light … [Read more...]
Archives for 2013
Richard Rodriguez on Religion, Atheism and Politics
SOMETIMES I wonder why the words -- especially the personal essays -- of Richard Rodriguez hit me so directly. He is a gay Latino born in the '40s, a devout if conflicted Catholic, and on many issues a political or social conservative. My origins and allegiances are very different and coincide with none of those categories (I have long thought of myself, for instance, as a Protestant agnostic on … [Read more...]
Dave Allen on Rock Music and the Internet
RECENTLY I've been corresponding with Dave Allen, bassist for the British post-punk group Gang of Four. His ideas on digital culture -- mostly strongly opposed to those of David Lowery and David Byrne -- are as forceful as his bass playing on Entertainment! I'll point out that I disagree with Mr. Allen on much of what he says; I'm less optimistic that the new system will work out for musicians … [Read more...]
Returning to Charlie Haden, Jazz and Transcendence
TODAY I have been trying to move on to other things, but can’t get the memory of last night’s Charlie Haden/ Liberation Music Orchestra concert out of my mind. There are too many things to contemplate here, but let me offer a few stray thoughts. Overall: While this night was by no means perfect – there were minor technical problems early on, the musician most of us had come to see was in such … [Read more...]
Celebrating Charlie Haden
TUESDAY night in Los Angeles will see both a celebratory and a sad occasion: The jazz titan Charlie Haden – the lyrical bass player, free-jazz pioneer, crucial collaborator to Ornette Coleman and others, father to a four Los Angeles indie rockers, founder of CalArts jazz program – will lead his Liberation Music Orchestra at REDCAT. It has special music since this group – which Haden began in 1969 … [Read more...]
Print, Online and the Creative Class
TODAY I have another piece in Salon, this one about the folding of New York magazine into a biweekly, and the resulting conversation about where the media is (and isn't going.) HERE it is. People trying to be "counterintuitive" are framing this as a win for journalists and journalism, since more people will read New York related copy on the blogs (some of which are quite good.) It's like saying … [Read more...]
David Lowery vs. Silicon Valley
CAMPER Van Beethoven's singer David Lowery has become the most ornery of those fighting for musician's rights. He's erupted over piracy, Spotify, lyric websites, and the battle between the surviving Beastie Boys (with the ghost of Adam Yauch) and GoldieBlox. I speak to him for Salon here. He makes a pretty good case for what's wrong with Silicon Valley techno-utopianism, which leaves artists … [Read more...]
Cheering George Packer’s "The Unwinding"
LORD know this book does not need any more praise, but I want to wave the tattered American flag for George Packer's The Unwinding, which just won the National Book Award. The book is not perfect -- more on that in a minute -- but it is lyrical, powerfully reported, passionately written, and lives up to its subtitle: "An Inner History of the New America." As research for my own Creative … [Read more...]
Digging the New Dean Wareham
DESPITE our well-documented bias for things West Coast, the Misread City gang has a deep and abiding love for the work of Dean Wareham going back to the Galaxie 500 and Luna eras. The day after seeing Luna on its first US tour (opening for the Sundays, if memory serves, and before the first LP), we walked to the local record store in Chapel Hill to pick up the band's Slide EP. (It was what we … [Read more...]
Disappearing Into "Invisible Cities"
THERE’s a phrase of John Cage’s I think about once in a while, despite having radically mixed feelings about the man and his work. “Theater exists all around us,” he once wrote, “and it is the purpose of formal theaterto remind us this is so.” This notion came alive for me the other night as I caught one of the last performances of Invisible Cities, the wild-ass, Calvino-inspired opera that … [Read more...]