review

A critical evaluation of Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell. It’s funny how the American Revolutionary War is taking America by storm now – much like the revolutionary war actually did back when it happened. I’m sure this is mostly due to the Hamilton musical which I observe with a very suspicious eye. I might not know much about books, but I know a thing or two about music and Hamilton sounds like amateur-ish rap sung by...

A critical evaluation of Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein. The closest I ever got to seeing Sleater-Kinney was seeing Wild Flag play. Standing on the balcony, waiting through the opener’s set, there was Carrie Brownstein standing on the sidelines of the stage watching the set as well. I wondered if we’d get to interact with her. “She’s a rock star,” my then-girlfriend reminded me. After the show, much to my surprise, a lot of people stayed...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Trying To Become A Millionaire reissue LP by California Playboys, released by Manufactured Recordings/Omnian I know I’ve said this before, but it’s a statement which requires regular reiteration: one of the best parts about records after they’re made and have come out is that they’re there – available to be found when potential listeners are ready to find them. It’s even easier now that the music industry is hurriedly reissuing so...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Vinyl Me, Please reissue of Paranoid by Black Sabbath. Ever since I “got into” metal through the likes of Motorhead and Mastodon, I’ve been trying to fill in the holes in my musical brain with all the awesome metal I’ve missed out on over the years. Unfortunately, I’ve been getting more and more disappointed with what I’ve been finding. Albums from Metallica, Kylesa and Baroness are fine, but I’d much rather...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Battletoads soundtrack LP, released by I Am 8-Bit. I’m going to give you a second so you can process the craziness that you’re seeing here. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Battletoads soundtrack on vinyl. That’s Battletoads – as in the Nintendo game from the Nineties, regarded as one of the hardest games of all time. Is this the 8-bit soundtrack in all its 8-bit glory? Yes it is. Is...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Vinyl Me Please edition of Super Ape by Lee “Scratch” Perry. Music is a wonderful thing. If you listen to it correctly and put in the time, it can form a sort of six degrees of Kevin Bacon in your mind; bands get interconnected and genres get mixed and involved. As artists borrow from each other, new sounds are created and the inspirational wheel keeps turning. What am I talking about?...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Record Store Day reissue of At Budokan – The Complete Concert 2LP by Cheap Trick. While the 1970s are known for lots of things which happened musically (like the break-up of The Beatles, the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, John Bonham and Elvis Presley, the birth of both punk and disco and many other events), perhaps one of the biggest deals was the concept of a live album...

A critical evaluation of Funny Girl by Nick Hornby. I owe a great deal to Nick Hornby, partly for writing one of the greatest movies ever (no, it’s not the new one), but mostly for getting me into reading books in the first place. This happened many years ago and even though I’ve had my favorites of his over the years, every book has managed to strike a chord within me. Whenever I thought I’d have a character or a...

Wayne Federman The Chronicles of Federman (A Special Thing Records) As a comedy fan, I’ve heard the name Wayne Federman thrown around for a while. I really had no idea that it was because the man is a bit of an institution in the alt-comedy world and has been doing comedy for almost three decades. With such a long career, it’s no wonder the man’s comedy is being collected in the form of a chronicle a.k.a. The Chronicles of Federman....

A critical evaluation of Under The Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk by John Doe with Tom DeSavia and friends, published by Da Capo Press While the stories are (almost) never the same, it’s pretty surprising how consistently structured and formulaic most rock biosand scene expositions are; be it the story of one artist or the collected stories of many, the authors of such books often attempt to condense the finer points of “what happened” down into...