Archives

Five Alarm Funk Sweat (independent) Without intending to come off as trite, there are occasions when it’s possible to mark certain similarities between a new album and music which has appeared elsewhere in music history, but those moments can still reverberate...

The Bouncing Souls Simplicity The Bouncing Souls will always be an important band in my life. Not just because they were my gateway band to punk rock and some truly great music, but because when I put on some of their records, they still manage to move me after all...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2LP reissue of Surrender by The Chemical Brothers. Then as now, the conventional wisdom is that Dig Your Own Hole has the biggest of The Chemical Brothers’ entries into the mainstream but, for this critic’s...

A Contract with God: And Other Tenement Stories Hardcover Centennial Edition by Will Eisner   Let’s talk about the words “graphic novel.” You know it just means comics, right? Well, the thing is, mainstream comics want to use it to label their kiddy...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2LP reissue of Dig Your Own Hole by The Chemical Brothers. …And then, with the release of Dig Your Own Hole, The Chemical Brothers became a pop culture phenomenon. Now, it could be contended that the arrival and...

Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong No matter how much you think you know about Seinfeld, there’s always more to uncover. I considered myself a fan of the show ever since I would watch the live broadcast back in high...

The Weirdo Years by R. Crumb: 1981-’93   Robert Crumb is THE man in indie comics. Having been around for so long and having put out material of such high quality, and having been such an influence on not just other artists, but other writers and on pop...

Ben Webster Gone With the Wind   I think it says a lot that I can go from listening to GG Allin to Ben Webster in the same day. But that’s what being a true punk rocker means: your music world is constantly expanding and your appreciation for different genres is...

Beck Morning Phase Beck, you guys. Beck! One of the only artists (along with Radiohead) that appealed to me in high school, taught me a thing or two about how good music should be made, and kept me with them all these years. Odelay changed the game for me. At first, I...

Demanding The Impossible: A History Of Anarchism by Peter Marshall Demanding the Impossible has been on my to-read list ever since I saw its cover with a Noam Chomsky quote on the book racks at Powell’s. However, this is one hefty book and I didn’t want to tackle...