A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols LP by the Sex Pistols. The problematic thing about albums which come to be regarded as “culturally significant” is that, after it has been released and that cultural significance presents itself on a larger scale, everyone whats to get their hands on it and tool around with it in order to put their fingerprints on it and make it their own – in...
Oh SeesFace Stabber I’ve always admitted Thee Oh Sees (now just “Oh Sees”), first for their talent, then for their consistent output of good music, then for their work ethic, then for all three. One never knows what a new year will bring, musically, but one can always count on a new John Dwyer project. Honestly, with such a massive output of stellar material, it’s hard for me to admit that this band and frontman John Dwyer are still a...
Elliott SmithXO(Bong Load 25th Anniversary)photo: turntablelab.com I thought I had closed the book on Elliott Smith in my life. He was thrust upon me by an ex girlfriend who was from Oregon. As you can imagine, you can’t be in high school in Oregon in the 90s and not be consumed by Elliott Smith’s music. And when you date someone like that, some of that stuff is going to rub off on you. I absorbed his last album From a...
Hudson Hawk(Mill Creek Retro VHS) I’d like to take you to a time, 1991, when Bruce Willis was the cats pajamas. By then, he had solidified himself as a bona fide action movie star and a blockbuster artist. It seemed like Willis’ presence in a movie would be enough to carry it. So the man had carte blanche. If he fancied himself a musician, he could be one, and the Return of Bruno (his questionable blues covers album) was a...
Empowered and the Soldier of Loveby Adam Warren and Karla Diaz You gotta love an underdog. And if you love comics, that means you gotta love Adam Warren. I’m surprised someone of his talent isn’t more of a household name, but at the same time, I kinda like that about him. Have the best bands in history ever been the most popular? The Ramones? The Clash? Nope. The Beatles? Well, maybe. But someone like Adam Warren has been making highly...
My War by Kurt Morris There are music lovers and then there are music lovers. To some of us, music is more than just something you play in the background, something that can be used to fill dead air, or something to decorate our day. To some of us, music can offer a deep sense of connection and help us understand ourselves. It can get us out of a tough spot. It has healing powers. Yes, not all of us...
Who Owns the Futureby Jaron Lanier I hate books that give away the ending in the title. I hate it more when they tell you there’s an ending then don’t show it to you. The problem with titles like “Who Owns the Future” is that it makes your book sound like a self-help book. Like “The Secret.” I understand that Jaron Lanier is supposed to sell books and maybe his publisher pushed for this title, but if he were so...
Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggleby Jamie Woodcock It’s strange for me to think just how engrossed I was in the gamer lifestyle when I was a kid. I think it might have been because I was an unmotivated, unimaginative kid, but I was deeply tuned into video games for as long as I could remember. My brother was into them, so he got me started, and I just upped the ante. I would read magazines, carefully...
Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Cultureby Noam Chomsky Should Noam Chomsky be required reading for everyone? Of course. The man has written about so many topics, that anyone is bound to find something that appeals to them. And in reading Chomsky, you can always expect your entire understanding of the world to be flipped upside down. You can consider it a challenge for being exposed to an alternate perspective, or you can consider Chomsky someone who...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into The Drowns’ Under Tension LP. While we could easily start this review of The Drowns’ debut album discussing the disparity between looks (the album cover – which is terrible) and content (the music on the album), let’s just start with this endorsement: no matter how much praise Under Tension receives, it deserves more. There are plenty of flaws in the packaging, but the music is absolutely peerless in its quality. From beginning...