Blogs
President, Gang Leader or Enforcer?
Last night I heard a soundbite with Hillary Clinton reassuring Pennsylvania voters that she had their backs. Literally. “I’ve got your back; I’ve got all of your backs,” she said. […]
Get to Know Me
DVDs are stacking up like cord wood here, and a couple merit attention. I recently wrote about the Robyn Hitchcock retrospective and how, when it comes down to it, I […]
Throbbing Gristle and the Replacements
I just finished Matmos’ Drew Daniels’ entry in the 33 1/3 series, 20 Jazz Funk Greats. He contemplates the album by industrial music pioneers Throbbing Gristle, and I was left […]
Goodbyes
We do too many obits in OffBeat these days (a function of too many people dying), and it’s lousy to read your mail first thing in the morning and find […]
The Desk
Over the course of the last month, CDs have stacked up that I think I care about – at least enough to try to say something about them. Now with […]
New Stuff
The Jazz Fest issue is done, and my soundtrack for it was LCD Soundsystem’s 45:33, Dimitri from Paris’ new mix Return to the Playboy Mansion (particularly his treatment of “Someday […]
EMP Conference notebook dump, pt. 2
The EMP Pop Conference took place last weekend in Seattle, with critics, journalists and academics delivering papers on popular music and popular culture. I was there delivering a paper titled […]
EMP Pop Conference notebook dump pt. 1
The EMP Pop Conference just concluded in Seattle, where I presented a paper, “The First Rule of Hurricanes” – notes on post-Katrina songs. The conference is an odd union of […]
The Hang
When OffBeat did its tribute to Fats Domino, C.C. Adcock and Derek Huston served as musical directors, and we put together a horn line that included Domino alumni Herbert Hardesty, […]
The Way-Back Machine
I was looking through George Wein’s autobiography Myself Among Others to see if I remember correctly that when he produced Newport Jazz Festivals, that they leaned on older jazz guys […]
