I was fortunate enough to review Greil Marcus' two new books, Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations and Real Life Rock, for the Los Angeles Review of Books. The review is now up. Please consider checking out the many fantastic writers and thinkers at LARB, which has quickly become one of my favorite sites.
I don't have much in the way of extended thoughts, but here's a bit more....
My new column is up at PopMatters here. "A Town Called Malice" takes a look at the state of working-class music from the US to the UK. As you might guess, it grew out of thinking about The Jam, one of my favs, after watching the recent documentary About the Young Idea. I hope this… Continue reading Updates: Ties That Bind, Blind Engineer and More
My new column is up at PopMatters this morning. Titled "Sound Is Our Weapon: Protest Music and Black Lives Matter," it started out as me simply listening to Janelle Monae and Wondaland's "Hell You Talmbout" and Rhiannon Giddens' "Cry No More" and, as you can read, it became something more than that.
The Blind Engineer is headed out on the road for a whirlwind two-day tour of the central/southeastern corridor of the state. Exotic! The jet's in the shop so we'll have to drive. Full band with Bill Heingartner, Jesse Charles and Mr. Eric Nassau fresh off his tour.THURSDAY AUG. 27: Casa Nueva, Athens, Ohio // Opening… Continue reading The Blind Engineer Two-Day Tour
UPCOMING SHOW ALERT: The Blind Engineer will play in Athens, OH on Thursday, August 27 at Casa Nueva with The Heartlanders. Expect a low-cost door and good beer. Athens has always been one of my favorite places to play. The Wells had a handful of excellent shows there. This will be the first time the… Continue reading The Blind Engineer Heads to Athens
My new "Ties That Bind" column is up at PopMatters today, so as the Tom Tom Club said, check it out y'all. The subject this month is the fabled "rockist v. poptimist" debate, which I generally think impoverishes the way we talk about music despite the major benefit of more inclusivity brought about by the… Continue reading Ties That Bind: Rockists v. Poptimists
My band The Blind Engineer returns to the stage this Saturday, July 25 at the Rumba Cafe in support of Kevin Collins' CD release show. He's got a great new album called Ohio Town which you can check out here. Kevin is in the Mingo Town Music family--here's his page--and formerly fronted The Lost Revival.Also… Continue reading The Blind Engineer at Rumba Cafe
My latest "Ties That Bind" column is up at PopMatters. "The Thunderbolt of Change: 'Angels in America' and the Marriage Equality Victory" considers the portrayal of change in Tony Kushner's massive play and reflects on this in light of the historic, wonderful, and long overdue victory for equal rights with the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling.Also,… Continue reading Ties That Bind and Don’t Start Me Talkin’
I said I'd post some extended thoughts on Elijah Wald's Dylan Goes Electric! and Stephen Witt's How Music Got Free and by God I'm going to do it. But, if you haven't read my review of those books in the Los Angeles Review of Books, do that first, otherwise none of what follows will be in context. And hey, show LARB some love. I enjoyed working with my editor Michael Goetzman on what became a long review essay of something like 3700 words. Usually, as I work, I keep a "notes and outtakes" document running; that document for this essay was nearly 12000 words. There's a lot to discuss, but some of it I'll hold off on because it may show up in the chapter on Dylan I'm writing for Nothing Has Been Done Before.
When I decided to review the two books together using the theme of transgression with Great White Wonder as the link between them, I underestimated just how much I was tackling. So I had to make some hard decisions about what made the cut and what didn't. With both books, some of the more typical "book review" elements got cut. That's not uncommon with review essays, which function in a different way, but I've included a lot of those below.
Scattered updates must mean I'm busy, which is a good thing. My article "Scenes of Love and Theft: Bob Dylan, Piracy, and Cultures of Transgression" for the Los Angeles Review of Books should be up today. It reviews two new books: Elijah Wald's Dylan Goes Electric! and Stephen Witt's How Music Got Free. (Edit: Here's… Continue reading Scenes of Love and Theft and the Midwestern Work Ethic or Something
Robert Loss 