This isn’t a eulogy for Anthony Bourdain. It’s a celebration of rock and roll. Which in its way is a celebration of that which Bourdain loved. Rather than focus on the man who’s gone, let’s hoist a fucking chalice to the man who’s still here, Ethan Miller. Miller might not have inspired a love of travel, untold stories, or unconsidered
Read More
Dissent is patriotic. Music makes life suck less. I hold these truths to be self-evident, especially on Independence Day. Doesn’t matter what kind of music you’re into. Doesn’t matter who’s in office. We should all be thinking critically all the time, and we need a proper soundtrack to kick our powers of incredulity into high gear. Plus, music sends audio
Read More
Still feeling the soul glow from San Francisco. Tony Joe White called it Soul Francisco, and that was no joke. Saturday night I felt the fire and brimstone of Heron Oblivion at Mississippi Studios, and it cast my memory back there, lord, to two weekends ago when I wandered the streets that gave birth to that bad-ass band and so
Read More
Memorial Day was once a day of the dead for me. We’d climb in my parents’ minivan and drive to the cemetery in South Town. This was a time to place flowers on the graves of my great-grandfather and a neighbor who’d made sculptures out of matchboxes and pipe cleaners for us as kids. I never really understood what my
Read More
“Double double, toil and trouble, these be bands to reduce you to rubble. An aural potion to fill you with fright, drown in these sounds on Halloween night. If you dare to take a listen, they’re sure to make your cake-hole glisten. Drool as you duel with undead waves, and pray you don’t stumble into an early grave.” – The
Read More
“You gotta know when to boule them/ Know when to school them/ Know when to play a card/ Know when to flail. You never trade your token/ Unless you’re in the Viper Pass/ There’ll be time enough for cackling, once the ship has sailed.” – “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers (in an alternate dimension where Fireball Island, aka Ile Boule
Read More
You wouldn’t think a show set in post-Katrina New Orleans would be a smile factory. Perhaps that’s the alchemical magic of TV right there: It can take an experience that must have been hell to live through and turn it into something so life-affirming and brimming over with infectious groove that your squirms turn to funky grooves. Soon, you’re dancing
Read More
You can’t write about rap music without writing about race. Every aspect of the music and its progression over the years from community center dance parties in the Bronx to a billion-dollar, global phenomenon is somehow tied into the African-American experience. As a white guy, writing about hip-hop necessarily presents its own challenges, because nobody likes a white guy writing
Read More
As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to have a water feature. Or at least as far back as an afternoon spent playing at my grade school buddy Adam Carpenter’s house, which was adorned with a small pond and waterfall in the back left corner. The very term “water feature” is wholly inadequate to describe the sense
Read More
“Wet Hot American Summer” is my “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Well, it is, but see if you can follow me here. It … isn’t. Unlike acolytes of the “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” I would never pay good money to sit in a theater at midnight and listen to the loudest, tooliest “Wet Hot American Summer” fans in the room drown
Read More