Music: Dead Weather
Casey McKinney08.21.09
Been a lot of bad 70’s rip off bands since Lenny Kravitz first picked up a guitar and pillaged John Lennon* (I am thinking currently of one of those…
Music: The Fiery Furnaces: I’m Going Away
Casey McKinney08.21.09
One of this year’s surprise faves, Memphis based Jay Reatard, may have famously (okay famously if you are a music geek) dissed the Brooklyn…
Music: Psychic TV: Mr. Alien Brain vs The Skin Walkers
Casey McKinney08.21.09
While most of this year’s Genesis P-Orridge attention has been given to his reunion tours with an earlier band, the legendary noise pioneers…
The Little Prince of Purple Rain
Rayvon Pettis08.15.09
It’s been a rough season for ’80s pop. The summer of 2009 has seen Michael Jackson go down somewhat ingloriously, only to rise again in death, forgiven for our incessant gawking at his late public misadventures and/or overexamined life. Then, close on heels, John Hughes, the period’s auteur of adolescence passed. Thank god we still have the indefatigably funky Prince going strong. 25 years after his sorta-biopic’s release, it’s time to reflect on a film that captured best perhaps the ’80’s raison d’être, Purple Rain, released during the apex of Prince’s reign (thank god we no longer have to call him “the artist formally known as” even though I just did). Review by Rayvon Pettis, who is, incidentally, just a tad younger than the film itself. Art by Danny Jock.
Sean Hannity Wheels out the Sleeping Giant
Casey McKinney08.13.09
Sean Hannity Wheels out the Sleeping Giant
‘Exercise Won’t Make You Thin’ Time says
Casey McKinney08.08.09
‘Exercise Won’t Make You Thin’ Time says
Art: Greg Dalton
Casey McKinney08.07.09
Wanted to recommend someone I’ve long known, who is as true an artist as they come, Greg Dalton. He has a banner (the one with flora and a…
The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder
Michael Miller08.07.09
For several novels now, Stephen Elliott has been writing scintillating fiction that is almost always about himself; each is a memoir of some segment of his life, and like many a memoirist, there are those, like Elliott’s father, who challenge the writer’s veracity. In his latest, The Adderall Diaries, Elliott steps up to several challenges: he gets involved in a story that’s not his, a murder mystery, he confronts the naysayers like his father who complain that his memories are fiction, while simultaneously writing, in the midst of it all, perhaps his best memoir yet. Michael Miller charts Elliott’s tortuous and triumphant course through the new novel in his review here.
Don’t Smell the Floss: Healthy Social Boundaries as an Obstacle to Fiction
Jamie Gadette08.06.09
In this collection, Los Angeles-based writer, painter and musician Matty Byloos examines the human condition through amputation, eerie amounts of hair, kittens, pornography and ghost stories. While Byloos’s stories have appeared in The Fanzine and elsewhere in the past, taken together, they bump up against each other like strangers on a bus and as the stories make small talk with each other, they soon realize that they have something in common: Byloos’s funny, warped world view. Here, Jamie Gadette inhales the flossy aroma and reports back.
