Archive

Music and TV

22 November 2011

Around the time someone started spray-painting “Clapton is God” in an Islington Underground station, rock fandom took a turn towards what Ellen Willis described as a “tedious worship of technical proficiency.” Willis condemned this art-snob model of fandom, and in Out of the Vinyl Deeps she largely eschews it; her writing focuses very little on sound. More…

American Politics

18 November 2011

I was on one of the wildcat marches north from the park towards Astor Place, and I managed to make it back before they charged the last stand at Broadway and Pine. I think we won something both places. I didn’t hear a single chant about banks, the wars, or austerity, and that was fine. Instead they were about the police about how we weren’t going anywhere, about our right to be together on a sidewalk. More…

American Politics

8 September 2010

People in Bayou La Batre will talk to you about the oil spill, but they’d rather show you the high water mark in their oyster shop, their pool hall, or their home. The dramatic visibility of Hurricane Katrina makes it easier to talk about, easier to internalize than the BP oil spill. Next to newly built houses you find FEMA trailers, now used for storage. More…

In Memoriam

19 August 2010

In Jamaican parlance, a “selector” is a DJ, and a “DJ” is an MC. Before he became a great reggae singer, Lincoln “Sugar” Minott was both. Though he will perhaps be best remembered for his smooth voice and prolific recording career—forty albums in around as many years—it was his hustle and charm, cultivated in the highly competitive and wildly energetic Jamaican dancehall, that endeared Sugar to the world. More…