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Something like ten years ago, I was walking with a friend of mine down Westnedge Avenue, in Kalamazoo, MI. We were talking about rock music, and my friend, who’s about as brainy as they come, got onto the subject of the band Pavement. More specifically, he began deconstructing what he perceived to be the average Pavement fan. "College student," he [...]
It’s frustrating being over two thousand miles away from home and hearing about the death of the great Joe Strummer, the Clash singer, guitarist. As I read his obituary in the LA Times (on page 1 – nice to see he got the respect he deserves) all I want to do his to listen to his music, but I’m at [...]
I would like to believe that I went out to Queens to leave the My Adidas sweatshirt in tribute to Jam-Master Jay, but I'd be lying. I've long gotten a superiority chuckle watching "mourners" on television who bring hand-painted signs, 99-cent store teddy bears, daily newspapers with 64-pt. headlines announcing the celebrity death, and acres of chrysanthemums, roses and white [...]
I don’t like show tunes and don’t really understand how any one does. But the idea of piano bars intrigues me the same way pick-up basketball games and gay sex clubs do, as a place where men get to play with strangers. So when my mus ical theater friends Jim and Andy invited me to Marie’s Crisis, I went along [...]
Continued from Part One It's tough playing to a half-empty house, but there is some consolation if the house you're playing holds 60,000 people. It's been a beautiful day in Oakland, and now, in the cool blue dusk, the crowd upfront is getting seriously pumped. As usual, Oasis are immobile. Arthurs is, for reasons no one can fathom, the recipient [...]
My first job in Midtown Manhattan was as a clerical assistant in a large law firm on Fifth Avenue. It’s the building of the beast with the illuminated neon red 666 emblazoned across the top of the structure. It wasn’t glamorous work, but I made the best of my surroundings by exploring the neighborhood during my lunch break. My other [...]
Roberta Guaspar Tsavaras purchased fifty violins in 1978, while married to a naval officer stationed in Greece. She assembled her collection piecemeal, from stores in Athens and neighboring towns. "The idea was that I would teach violin at schools and when he was transferred to a new base, I would take the violins, show up at the next school, and [...]
There are some songs that if heard in the right situation might push you to the brink of something horrid. Some of these situations are real, some are fiction. D.C. Berman: "Rain" by Blind Melon, through the ceiling of a Married Student Housing apartment while you're bidding for '70s cereal boxes on eBay against a guy named Ratbrain. Mike Fellows: [...]
There are some songs that if heard in the right situation might push you to the brink of something horrid. Some of these situations are real, some are fiction. Tim Rutili: 1."Whoop There it is," rapped over by a Melrose Park wedding DJ with a cordless mic as the dance floor was heating up at my cousin's wedding. 2. "Summer [...]
Charles McAlexander is a big man, maybe 220 pounds and 6 foot 1. He wears an old work shirt that used to be bright red but now is more of a calm royal maroon with the inscription of Brass Lab in gold cursive on the chest pocket of the left-hand side. The button up shirt is having trouble deciding which [...]
My life lies in piles around my feet. It is mostly paper things; boxes of musical scores, boxes marked STORAGE and HOME. Why does the Rilke go to STORAGE and the Hesiod makes it to HOME? Who knows? I take the G train to my studio at the Classon stop in central Brooklyn. The G train is mired in the [...]
It begins with a button marked Brass Lab. I press it and there is no answer and behind me groups of men in tank-tops work in automotive repair shops and listen to to Spanish music on mini-stereos set up next to the cars. Finally, a voice from above bellows, "It's open!" and I look up to a bald man who [...]
"I LOVE THAT MAN A BITCH!" SHOUTS LIAM GALLAGHER. HE JUMPS OUT OF HIS CHAIR and paces around the room in a small tight circle. "If anyone stepped on his toes, I'd cut them off!" Liam sits down, and his voice becomes grave and somber. "I'd do time for 'im. I luv 'im. Me and 'im are cool. But..." and [...]
I said my good-byes to Oasis in the lobby of a posh hotel in San Francisco. Elevators ascended to the skies in clear glass tubes and businessmen in dark suits marched in and out while the boys lay around on the overstuffed couches, profoundly hung over, trying to rouse themselves for the sound check for that night's show, the second [...]
A little before 2 a.m. on Saturday, December 1, 2001, I decided to check out the George Harrison memorial that fans were spontaneously holding at Strawberry Fields in Central Park. On my way I stopped by a deli on the southwest corner of 72nd and Broadway first for a coffee. Chun Kim, 43, a friendly balding man who'd emigrated from [...]
I heard the shots that killed John Lennon. Did you hear that?" My sister asked as she burst into my room after the five quick popping sounds had just drifted into my room. "Did you hear those gunshots?" I gave her a look. I told her they were firecrackers. It was late and she was bothering me. I was sixteen, [...]
Charles Lane is a narrow cobblestoned alley that connects Washington Street and the West Side Highway. There is nothing particularly remarkable about it, except it feel like one of those narrow crevices in the city which time has forgotten, even though it is tucked into a peculiarly modern housing development. A rehearsal studio called Charles Lane studios was once in [...]
1.The Crystal Ballroom Stephen Malkmus stands in the back. The dark club is packed packed, and he peers beneath bangs, shoulders slouched, a hint of atheleticism to them. He is a tall, slender figure with high cheekbones, checking out the crowd like a secret service agent, or a local hero about to make a cameo. Jackpot, a local record store, [...]
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