Paul McCarthy is a Jack Mormon?
Archive for June, 2013
Weekend recs
Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, by Jefferson Cowie (2010) Like a What’s the Matter with Kansas? with liner notes, this book’s hook is how Cowie reads cultural products of the time as reflecting shifts in working class identity from the mid ’60s through the early ’80s. Paul Schrader’s […]
The Civil War Amendments
I’m not a worshipper at the altar of the U.S. Constitution. It is a deeply flawed and outdated document, and both the United States and the world would be better off if the Constitution were replaced by a more truly democratic governmental structure. Still, I will admit that I have been known to cry when […]
The expat’s return: Top and bottom 10
After returning to New York from almost a year in Abu Dhabi, it’s hard not to assess differences. Some things are an equal trade: spectacular blue skies and clouds in New York for equally spectacular pink skies and the enormous desert sun in the UAE. But cultural differences are trickier to parse. The other day, […]
For music freaks
Michael Chapman is an English folk/jazz/experimental guitarist & singer who has put out a ton of albums over the years. After some initial success, he labored in obscurity for a couple decades, but he has been recently “rediscovered,” and his early ’70s records are starting to get reissued. This 1970 live performance is completely mind […]
Weekend recs
Orphan Black (BBC America) Want to know why unknown Tatiana Maslany beat out Claire Danes, Vera Farmiga, and Elisabeth Moss this week at the Critics’ Choice Awards? Then beg, borrow, or steal your way to Orphan Black, Season One. Sarah discovers a doppelganger committing suicide by subway. Identity theft leads down a rabbit hole of […]
Molly Drake
Here’s a thrilling collection of home recordings, from the 1950s and ’60s, by Nick Drake’s mother. h/t Trouble/WFMU
Slaughter on Tenth Avenue
I don’t know if it’s as simple as being back in New York after the better part of a year away, but for whatever reason I woke up this morning with Rodgers and Hart on the brain. I know I’ve evangelized their cinema showcase Words and Music (1948) for years, and have probably already subjected […]
Weekend recs
Hollywood Lesbians by Boze Hadleigh (1994): Celebrity gossip is only enjoyable when the subjects themselves are compelling. Hadleigh interviewed mostly closeted lesbians from Hollywood’s Golden Age, a few from behind the camera like Edith Head, and got startlingly frank — if sometimes coded — responses out of almost all of them. It’s dizzying to watch […]
We still have folk music, it just means something different
In the age of mass pop, Bohemian Rhapsody is the new campfire sing-along. You know it’s true.
