Celebrating Community
Singer and seer Lonnie Holley has a remarkable way of playing off of others while never seeming to quite change his act. The Alabama native first gained attention as a sculptor and visual artist working with found materials in what might be labeled “folk” or “outsider” idioms. He found his way into music and performance, first accompanying himself on a […]
The Gang of Four revivalism of the early naughts got one thing terribly wrong. Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand and their ilk did a reasonable enough job at aping the angular punk-funk sound, but lacked the rigidity. They weren’t fierce. They weren’t disciplined. They seemed to want to have a good time. A generation later, London’s Dry Cleaning is out to […]
Vocalist Priya Carlberg formed Birthday Ass five years ago when she was a student at the New England Conservatory, but the band members’ backgrounds in jazz and improvisation shouldn’t be cause for concern. The sextet has sufficient attitude to back its name, as evidenced by the Bandcamp bundles for their new album which include purple vinyl and band logo undergarments […]
I’m not sure where Alpha Maid comes from, but it seems like a scary place. Reports say South London, although Godard’s Alphaville seems more likely. I might also have guessed Bristol, where producer/rapper Tricky comes from, but that might be an overgeneralization. Like Tricky, though, or at least Tricky at his best, Alpha Maid make disturbing mixes, putting unadorned vocals […]
Born in 1955, Donna Florio lives in the same “barbell”-shaped West Village apartment she grew up in. Her new book, Growing Up Bank Street, recounts her bohemian childhood and coming of age, as well as the history of the neighborhood, stories from some of its longtime residents, and notable celebrity encounters, including John Lennon (whom she sprinkled while watering her […]
Two movies about important Black individuals in American history came out this past winter, one looked at the political persecution of a prominent public figure, the other was a movie about, in an important way, the presence of jazz in American life. I’m talking, of course, about The United States vs. Billie Holiday and Judas And The Black Messiah, and […]
The New York Margaret Munzer Loeb and Eden Wurmfeld grew up in was very different from the one their kids know: more crime and less technology, greater danger and fewer options for parental surveillance. Yet they had a freedom — to move around the city, to hang out with friends, to play — that their children, like so many in […]
Baseball seems determined to drive away as many people as possible. After seeing the mantle of the national pastime snatched away by football, the MBAs and lawyers who run the game decided the best way to get back into fans’ good graces was through interminable games built around clown-car bullpens (one pitcher on the roster to face one batter before […]
Not interested in science fiction? A longtime argument holds: Look beyond the setting (say, outer space) and the characters (maybe little green men) to find what’s human at its core—and therefore relatable. On their surface, the 21 short stories in “Falling from Trees” by Michael Fiorito are very much concerned with things like aliens and space travel. The characters are […]
It’s nervy to call something the last of anything, especially when it comes to neighborhoods. But as residents of The Hill in St. Louis see it, their community isn’t just the city’s Little Italy—it’s the last one in all of America. Scusi? What was that? You can almost hear the recriminations and curses coming from North Beach in San Francisco […]