In the late 80s and early 90s, skateboarding started a transition from a five-company economy to an independently-owned, skateboarder-run, hundred-company industry. All of the sudden everyone had a company, a brand, a team, a video. Most of them are long-gone, but for a few years there, it was difficult to keep up (Foundation’s Tod Swank… Continue reading The Lies Are All True: Alien Workshop’s Mind Field
Sonic Youth is not a band. It is an institution. Where other bands who manage to stay together for over a quarter of a century (or much less) become legacy bands (i.e., bands that are only known and revered for a part of their careers long past), Sonic Youth continue to push themselves and their… Continue reading The Eternal Sonic Youth
At long last, 2009’s Summer Reading List is collected, compiled, and complete. Inside you will find book recommendations from friends and usual suspects such as Richard Metzger, Cynthia Connolly, Steven Shaviro, Gareth Branwyn, Peter Lunenfeld, Gary Baddeley, Dave Allen, Patrick Barber, and myself, as well as newcomers David Silver and Josh Gunn. If you’re like… Continue reading Summer Reading List, 2009
The music scene of the 1990s was confused. At the turn of that last decade, Hip-hop was displacing Metal as the top-selling genre, and Nirvana was allegedly setting off the so-called “alternative revolution,” yet Guns ‘N Roses was all over MTV with opulent, twelve-minute videos and all over the charts with an epic double CD.… Continue reading Race for the Prize: 90s Music Biographies
Darby Crash had the perfect punk-rock plan: takeover the L.A. punk scene in five years, commit suicide, and become immortalized as a legend. Little did he know that Mark David Chapman would derail that plan very shortly after Darby followed through. Biggie Smalls never had such a plan, but after a five-year ascent to the… Continue reading It’s Better to Burn Out Than to Fade Away.
