Soul Psychodelicide
NOTES ON THE SIGN O’ THE TIMES BOXSET, PT. 1. It took me a while to listen to all of the Sign O’ the Times outtakes from the boxset released in 2020. Maybe you’ve had this experience: you know a work of art is going to be so good that you want to hold off and savor the anticipation. It’s not that you think the actual listening will disappoint. You know it won’t, and maybe,…
Cure and Care
Two months ago, my mother, who has dementia, fell. The memory care facility called me and I rushed over; by then the parademics were getting ready to load her onto a gurney. I can’t describe that moment yet. And here is where I say Mom is still alive and back in the memory care unit with her repaired hip. And I’m not really okay, but here is today, and there is tomorrow, and that’s what…
Masculin Féminin
Godard’s 1966 film is on YT in its entirety with English subtitles. Look at the scary warning below and ask yourself: “Am I old enough to view this film?” Maybe you aren’t. You should watch it anyway. Masculin Féminin is set in Paris in 1965, and it’s a grim place, alluring but never beautiful. In the opening scene, a woman follows a man out of a cafe and shoots him. In what seems to be…
SexyMF30 Prince Symposium
Dispatches from the virtuality–Prince as superhero–Chris Rock I was fortunate to participate in another online symposium produced by De Angela Duff, my hero, a.k.a., Polished Solid. <–If you are interested in what’s happening in Prince scholarship, De Angela’s channel should be your first stop. SexyMF30 celebrated and examined Prince’s 1992 Love Symbol album, stylized as the unpronounceable symbol which Prince would adopt as his name just one year later on his birthday, June 7, 1993.…
Echoes of Ourselves
Like Substack but with less stackin’. Prince Sticks Up for Teachers at Age 11 In April 1970, Prince was eleven years old and Minneapolis teachers were on strike. In recently discovered footage shot by WCCO, the Twin Cities’ CBS affiliate, there is Prince, confident but with a familiar shyness, sticking up for the teachers. When the news of this footage broke, Prince-verse lit up like the purple crack in the sky in the recent Spider-Man…
Revisiting Nothing Has Been Done Before
Recently I was interviewed for our local community paper’s book column about my 2017 book, Nothing Has Been Done Before. Read it here! I enjoyed chatting with Mandy Shunnarah about the continuing relevance of “the new” in music culture, and we even took a related detour into musical genres. If you want to learn more about the book, check out its page here on the website. I have a project in the works that would…
Built To Spill, “Cortez The Killer”
In the category of “Did Not Know I Needed This,” Built To Spill clocks in with a twenty-minute “Cortez The Killer,” the Neil Young anti-colonialism song. My mother is now in a memory care facility. The last five minutes of BTS’ performance, recorded live somewhere, gets at the feeling.
Blind Engineer Returns with Human Capital
My band’s first full-length has been available for some time over on Bandcamp in digital and CD formats. We’re also on the Spotify and other streaming sites. We also have a kick-ass t-shirt for your consumption! Pic follows the embed.
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Robert Loss 