The War on Drugs started with Billie Holiday. – Johann Hari, POLITICO Jazz was the opposite of everything Harry Anslinger believed in. It is improvised, relaxed, free-form. It follows its own rhythm. Worst of all, it is a mongrel music made up of European, Caribbean and African echoes, all mating on American shores. To […]
Continue reading →Sylvia Plath picks her nose By Sylvia Plath, by way of Janet Malcolm. There are so many subtle variations of sensation. A delicate, pointed-nailed fifth finger can catch under dry scabs and flakes of mucus in the nostril and draw them out ot be looked at, crumbled between fingers, and flicked to the floor in […]
Continue reading →I’m beginning to think all the best Wikipedia entries are about pop music. Red Headed Stranger is a 1975 album by American outlaw country singer Willie Nelson. After the wide success of his recordings with Atlantic Records, coupled with the negotiating skills of his manager, Neil Reshen, Nelson signed a contract with Columbia Records, a […]
Continue reading →This should not work. Vocals aside, it does. If it hurts, salve with Morton Feldman: You’re welcome.
Continue reading →How to Take a Picture of a Severed Head Or not. IS is working very hard to manage its media presence, and it’s working. By Sebastian Meyer and Alicia P.Q. Whitmeyer at Foreign Policy. H/t Alex Horton. Photo via Reuters via Foreign Policy. Mirwan was recruited to document IS’s recent attack on the town of Sinjar, he says […]
Continue reading →“No one wants to be remembered most for what they did at 22.” But if at that tender age you get the chance to change musical history with the Ornette Coleman Band, take it. Charlie Haden, who died this week at 76, did. Here’s David A. Graham on one of jazz’s most deeply musical and melodic […]
Continue reading →The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie – NYTimes.com I can’t stop thinking about this article. Beautifully written deep-dive search for the identity of two iconic blues-women, the history of blues, the history of the history of blues, and the fuzzy line where digging for information becomes thievery. Hats off to John Jeremiah Sullivan, for enthralling writing, and to the New […]
Continue reading →I spent last evening utterly absorbed in John Jeremiah Sullivan’s account of his search for two long-dead blues singers, “The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie,” which takes him through blues history and the history of blues history and then some more layers after that. I hope to write more on this later, for the story raises […]
Continue reading →Austin Kleon, who’s been playing Erik Satie on the piano a lot lately, has a nice post on this rather eccentric composer. It leads with a bit about a favorite subject of mine, the creative power of walking He was, like, many of the greats, a walker: On most mornings after he moved to Arcueil, Satie would return to Paris […]
Continue reading →A couple weeks ago I found myself staring at an undersized image on my iPhone: the wee tiny cover of Neil Young’s 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps, which I was listening to yet again. Rust deepens nicely over time, because time is its subject. The title track* is about remaining rustless as you age. In “Powderfinger,” another […]
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