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… Continue reading Echoes of Ourselves
To the White people in the room I would ask, What do you mean by unity? It's a word like others that gets tossed around in public relations statements and mission statements with the assumption that everyone knows what the word means—as if we have all agreed. Oneness of purpose. The inclusion of all. A… Continue reading On Unity
My most recent column at PopMatters is here. After being emotionally and ideologically messed with (in a good way) by the documentary Wild Wild Country, I had to write about Bill Calahan's song "Drover," how it's used in the film, and the many layers of meaning and response--which, like the film, kept expanding. Here's an… Continue reading PopMatters: Wild Wild Country
I've been meaning to share this fairly recent interview with Boris Groys published in Krisis late last year. It's almost entirely a reflection on Groys' book On the New, which was originally published in 1992 and features heavily in my own book. Interviewer Thijs Lijster does an excellent job leading us through the book with… Continue reading Boris Groys on “On the New”
I'm looking forward to this event coming up Thursday Feb. 15 in which I get to not only discuss Afrofuturism and pop music's political resistance, but I get to do so with Sharon Udoh of the terrific local band Counterfeit Madison. "Listening To: Pop Resistance" will be an informal listening event featuring plenty of music… Continue reading Listening To: Pop Resistance
I had the opportunity to interview Kevin Erickson from Future of Music Coalition about the impending vote to end net neutrality and its impact on musicians and the broader music ecosystem. Many thanks to Kevin and PopMatters for turning this around so quickly. Read the interview here. An excerpt: You can also read my… Continue reading Net Neutrality and the Music Ecosystem
Net neutrality protects the true democratic potential of the internet: that anyone, regardless of wealth or social status, may produce new thought, knowledge, forms of expression, goods, and services, and contribute to the creation of new communities. While it's true that the internet is by no means perfect, eliminating net neutrality would remove a critical… Continue reading Statement on Net Neutrality
Net neutrality protects the true democratic potential of the internet: that anyone, regardless of wealth or social status, may produce new thought, knowledge, forms of expression, goods, and services, and contribute to the creation of new communities. While it's true that the internet is by no means perfect, eliminating net neutrality would remove a critical… Continue reading Statement on Net Neutrality
My most recent column is up at PopMatters. This month it concerns the awesome Detroit band Protomartyr, mentioned briefly in Nothing Has Been Done Before. Here's an excerpt from the essay: Relatives in Descent is, musically, a more contemplative and less full-throttle Protomartyr album than the three which precede it. I almost wrote "intellectual", which… Continue reading Not NHBDB: Protomartyr at PopMatters
The book was going to include a chapter on R.E.M. adapted from a column I wrote some years ago about the song "Driver 8" from the band's 1985 album Fables of the Reconstruction. The point was to discuss how a song's context can change over time, a point made by Stipe himself in his introduction… Continue reading Outtakes 2: R.E.M.
Robert Loss 