Celebrating Community
As I type this shortly after Christmas, I’m already listening to 2021. And man it sounds good. I try not to be a person who depends on hope, and that negative capability is one of the things that helped keep me (mostly) rational and above water through 2020. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst? More like, expect the […]
The surprising thing about New York black metal band Liturgy in 2020 isn’t frontperson Hunter Hunt-Hendrix coming out as transgender. It might be interesting. It no doubt informs her obscure-anyway songwriting. And she’s to be commended for the forthright and thoughtful coming out video she posted to her YouTube channel in August. But it’s not the most exciting thing about […]
The Argentinian band Reynols wasn’t widely known even before they disappeared for some 17 years. They just don’t do the kind of music that gets a band known. That might change with the release of the new Gona Rubian Ranesa, arguably the most musical album they’ve put out, but really it won’t. Which is a shame, because Reynols represent everything […]
Negativland has been successfully prophesying doom for 40 years now, their secret all along being using society’s words against itself. Pioneers in sampling and culture jamming, the outfit is perhaps most notorious for a petty, prolonged and hilarious copyright battle with U2, but they’ve had a longer, more varied and for more subversive career than simply lambasting Ireland’s most famously […]
What a year. Like a lot of eras, 2020 doesn’t fit easily into pre-defined calendar definitions. Did the 19th century end in in 1900 or 1914? Did the World Wars end in 1945 or 1989? The 20th century certainly came to a close on September 11, 2001, or was that just America? And 2020 probably began with the first Democratic […]
The punk ethos was designed to implode, and implode it did (or should have, anyway). Punk was a fiery rejection of the status quo. Once it became status quo, it was time to go. But like a dinner guest you don’t know is dead, punk refused to leave. The problem came with confusing the idea that talent and technique weren’t […]
Marc Ribot’s punkjam trio Ceramic Dog had been playing low key gigs around town for a long time before really finding their voice on their second album, 2013’s Your Turn. That’s when they started to get mad. The sarcastic AF song was about musicians gleefully accepting social media presence over money for their work “Masters of the Internet” was both […]
Back in July, Magik Markers quietly released a four-song digital EP, the first new music they’ve put out in a half dozen years. It was subdued, a little psychedelic, with a title suggesting they’ve been out of our ugly loop for a while. (Magik Markers has always been good at naming). In October, the band followed Isolation From Exterior Time: […]
There is something disorienting and unsettling about experiencing an artist talking about the end of their career in real time. They narrate the end of something that, until uttered, still existed. Imagine reading a book where every word disappears as your eyes move along the line, the only trace the one left in your memory. That is what it was […]
Jorma Kaukonen has played Monterey Pop, Woodstock and festivals all around the world for the past half century plus. On this chilly October, New England night amidst the pandemic, it’s time for him to head towards the stage solo, wearing a mask, under a tent of socially distanced fans eagerly awaiting what is likely several music lover’s first concert experience […]