Tales of addiction: Never Enough in the TLS

three years?

barneyhoskyns.com

My addiction memoir gets a very nice review in the new TLS as part of an omnibus roundup of various books on the theme.

Eric J. Iannelli describes Never Enough as “erudite and ruminative” and writes:

“In ‘My Chemical Romance’, the first of two sections, the music critic and journalist, now approaching sixty, looks back on himself in his late teens and sees in the discontented peripheral figure who is unable to blunt the fervency of his emotions ‘an addict waiting to happen’. At twenty, he shoots up for the first time, immediately discovering a ‘one-size-fits-all remedy for the core angst of sentient being’. ‘I can see my crippling self-doubt’, he writes of the instant when the drug hits his brain, ‘but – most precious of all gifts – I can no longer feel it.’

“This mirrors the epiphanic moment experienced by many addicts, the first magical encounter with a…

View original post 251 more words

Millenials desecrate the sacred grave of Barry Hannah

this is the worst piece of shit i’ve ever heard. i knew i hated millenials, but now i know for fucking sure. both of you should immediately kill yourselves. barry hannah should never come out of your bespoke soaked mouth.

Book Fight!

This fall we’re reading authors’ final works, and talking about whether it’s better to burn out, or to fade away. Barry Hannah is often described as a “writer’s writer,” and while he never had any huge commercial success, he continues to have a fiercely devoted following. A following which might be kind of annoyed when they hear our reaction to this story.

In the second half of the podcast, we talk about musicians who made farewell albums (i.e., albums they recorded while knowing they’d be their last).

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps offset our costs and allows us to keep doing the podcast each week. In exchange for $5, you’ll also get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we explore some of the weirder reaches of the literary universe: Amish mysteries, caveman romances, end-times…

View original post 14 more words

“The destruction of the Village Voice” (Artforum)

RockCritics.com

Artforum gathers obits from Christgau, Greg Tate, Molly Haskell, J. Hoberman et al. The photo by Sylvia Plachy of Alexander Cockburn leading an editorial meeting is terrific; it provides the sort of romantic anti-romantic vision of what it must have been like to work at the Voice, at least in the minds of every writer who dreamt of doing such a thing. (I was lucky, under the editorship of Chuck Eddy, to pen maybe 8 or 10 record reviews for them, ca. 2000/2001, but it was never the right venue for me; I tried too hard to hew to what I thought was the Voice voice, as it were, and I laid the humour and the puns — not saying my reviews were actually funny — on way too thick. But hey, I have clippings I can one day share with my grandkids, so what the hell.)

Regarding the…

View original post 43 more words

Rock Critic Laws

RockCritics.com

In his new book, Rock Critic Law: 101 Unbreakable Rules for Writing Badly About Music, Michael Azerrad takes on the clichés that pervade rock writing. His mode is tongue-in-cheek, with the book written as a sort of satirical ‘Strunk & White’ manual for album reviewers, to be followed at the writer’s peril. If you’ve written about music, you’ll find yourself nodding along in recognition at many of the words and phrases he includes: universally loathed, criminally underrated, twin lead guitars, stunning debut.

(“Does Michael Azerrad Obey His Own Rock Critic Law?” Matthew Kassel, Slate)

View original post

UC44 – UC63 Contents on one page

There is no index for these issues. Instead, here are all the contents pages assembled into a single page, which may be searched by Cntrl/Command-F:

________________________________________________________________

• Undercurrents  44 February-March 1981

1 Eddies – News from everywhere

7 What’s When and What’s What

9 Cruising with Uncle Sam – Harry Hamill: The further adventures of ATWitch

10 Own Goal – John Fletcher: Will the Army play the War Game?

11 Pen Pushing – Dave Pearson: Community publishing in Peckham

13 4th World – Peter Culshaw: First encounter of a decentralist kind

14 The Unkindest Cut – Lou Ernest: The Arts Council Axe

15 Proletarian Notes – David Evans: The Federation wants you

16 Radios in Motion – Fin Fahey: A London open radio campaign revealed

18 Wireless World – Jim Beatson: Radio freedom in Australia and Italy

19 Flying Post – Nigel Pollitt & Anna Searl: Exeter community paper

View original post 2,985 more words

New York Mixtape (1+2)

2 mixtapes to listen

The Hum

View original post 1,061 more words

Tom Hull Answers a Bunch of Questions About Tom Hull, Music Criticism, and RobertChristgau.com

RockCritics.com

Tom Hull has written, by his own estimation, “several millions of words” about rock, pop, and jazz since he first delved into rock criticism circa 1975, writing for the Village Voice, under the editorship of his mentor and friend, Robert Christgau. Like a lot of rock critics of his era, Hull moved on to other pursuits in the ’80s–in his case delving in to the world of software design and engineering. Said training came in handy a couple decades later when he joined forces with The Dean to create robertchristgau.com — the behemoth of rock critic websites, and an astonishing resource for all things Dean-related. Hull’s own site, Tom Hull on the Web, is in itself an excellent showcase, both for his own music criticism (past and present), as well as for his writing on movies, politics, books, etc. Hull’s web aesthetic might best be described as simple…

View original post 8,928 more words

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Dying of a Broken Heart

Inside the Hotel California

Gary Kellgren felt shitty. He was lying on a bed in the “Rack Room” of the Record Plant in Los Angeles in the summer of 1977, the multi-million dollar recording studio of which he was half-owner and creative genius, the place out of which the hits – “Hotel California,” “New Kid in Town,” “Isn’t She Lovely” – just kept on coming. And that morning at 3:00 am, as he did every other morning at 3:00 am, Gary Kellgren felt just terrible. He was lying on his back in the middle of a king size bed with his left arm flung across his forehead, and had left word with the security desk that he would receive no visitors. Still, four solicitous friends conned their way past two guards and three locked doors and arrived in the Rack Room to find Gary pissing blood.
Gary pissed blood in…

View original post 4,917 more words

Village Voice Memories

Populism

There’s been a lot of reminiscing about The Village Voice. I contributed to two pieces: The New York TimesPopcast podcast, and Billboard‘s roundup of writers remembering their first Voice pieces.

View original post

Blessings by the Pound

i love paul prudhomme

April Greene

The summer is flying by in a blur of good work, awesome trips, and rolling heat waves! But as the old saying goes, I am:

One clear highlight amid the menagerie: meeting Paula Poundstone at a Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me taping in Chicago!

The suit? “You never know when you’re going to have to serve ice cream.”

She is as divine as I expected; perhaps more. I mean, just look at her suit!! I was so happy to have decided on the striped top that day. #twinsies

Until the next dispatch, big summer blessings to all.

View original post

Jerry Lee Lewis, “the Killer” of Rock N Roll

“mary kathy jones”

All Things Thriller

It was just your average hot and sticky July evening in Nesbit, Mississippi. Nesbit’s usually pretty quiet–and it especially was back then, in 1981–though it’s only about twenty miles from Memphis. But of course nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors–average small town or big city, for that matter.

Behind closed doors at 1595 Malone Road, the Killer stumbled down the long hallway of his rambling ranch style home. He clutched his stomach and slid down a wall. Searing pain engulfed his abdomen. “K.K.!” he called to his then girlfriend. The Killer was lucky she heard him. His voice was little more than a harsh raspy whisper.

Mary Kathy Jones stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him. He was white as a sheet and coughing up blood.

Jones and long time road manager J.W. Whitten carried the Killer to his El Dorado Cadillac. Whitten floor boarded it…

View original post 2,320 more words

Los Punk Rockers – The World’s Weirdest Sex Pistols Cover Band

Desperate Living

View original post 423 more words

Big Bond Themes And Secret Agent Cover Versions

This gallery contains 28 photos.

@Reprobatemag Desperate Living View original post 335 more words

Article: Agent Provocateur’s Erotic Euro Horror Film

Desperate Living

View original post 173 more words

Cheap Thrills – The Amazing World Of The Top Of The Pops Cover Version LPs

This gallery contains 93 photos.

Desperate Living View original post 1,661 more words

Dallas History on the BBC

Flashback : Dallas

“Howdy, chaps!”

by Paula Bosse

A few years ago, when writing about one of the many attempts in the never-ending saga of trying to make the Trinity River a navigable waterway, I stumbled across the 99% Invisible podcast website where I discovered Julia Barton and her long audio piece on the very same topic. I was surprised — and excited — to find someone with a similar background to mine tackling Dallas’ history and looking at it from a thoroughly 21st-century perspective. I felt she and I had been separated at birth, and I enthusiastically contacted her via Twitter. Since then we’ve met a couple of times, chatted back and forth online, and, this year, she asked if I would help with research for a radio piece about Dallas she was preparing for BBC Radio. Of course I would!

Julia Barton is a radio and podcast editor and has…

View original post 607 more words

Internet Elvis: Rare and Obscure Songs

yes, you’re right. i couldn’t have re-blogged that any better

Our Daily Elvis

While in 2017,  Beyonce is a university marketing class, in the 1990s – Academia took notice of Elvis Presley.

Elvis Presley was the most popular and most maligned and the first/last entertainer that everyone can agree to something on.

In the Web 1.0 days of static pages – after Geekdom – Elvis Presley fandom ruled the web.

Lucy Lawless of Xena Warrior Princess fame was the first celebrity of the net, when she was in the hospital after a horse riding stunt and went online into a Xena Fan Forum. She posted “it’s just a tv show” and the forum exploded.

The Blair Witch Project made the internet critical to marketing and the era of the weird wide wild web was over.

Many of the original sites no longer exist, free website hosting sites disappear into archives and off line.

I wanted to share and save this article: one of…

View original post 17,828 more words

The US Times

H. R. Punk 'n' Stuff

WOW! Everything finally lined up just right and after 26 years of looking for the band, the US Times, I have finally struck gold!

The US Times had an album, “Wanna Go to London”, with two songs that seemed to get a good rotation on WPRG in Baton Rouge, LA, US (now known as KLSU, the excellent LSU college station) sometime in 1982: “Wanna Go to London” and “I’m an Actor”. Unfortunately, I never saw them live. Oh, well. Those were the only songs I’ve heard from the album, that I know of.
 

They got enough airplay for me to remember some of the music and lyrics over the course of 26 years, slowly fading, fading, until today. Nothing in used record stores; in 1995, I began searching on the internet for it, maybe searching every year or two. At some point, about 1994, I spoke with my old high school friend, who is now married to…

View original post 1,008 more words

Elvis and Religious controversy

Our Daily Elvis

“Miracle of the Rosary” is truly miraculous in its own way, in the fact that it was published at all. Doubly so that it was recorded by Elvis – the only song about the Rosary to ever be recorded by a major artist and released on a major label. It is also a bit of a miracle Elvis remembered it for over a decade, after hearing it only once. And it is miraculous and mysterious that two Pentecostal boys felt called to record a song about one of the most sacred Catholic devotions and sacramentals.

https://aleteia.org/2017/10/16/it-is-miraculous-that-elvis-miracle-of-the-rosary-was-recorded/It is miraculous that Elvis’ “Miracle of the Rosary” was recorded

Just as valid as any other, eh:

EIN: Chris, please tell us the Chris Matthews story, your background etc.

CM:
I am Australian and 54 years old. For most of my working life I have
been a watercolour artist. I have also had a…

View original post 1,213 more words

Was There A Dark Side to Elvis and Gladys?

Nina's Soap Bubble Box

Give us this day, Sept 4, our Daily Elvis

1948

Elvis filled in the blank lines of his parent’s marriage certificate with his own name and that of “Magdline” Morgan, a girl he knew from church. He wrote in September 11th as the date of their marriage.

This all was a big surprise, 50 years later, to Magdalene, when she heard about it. She commended: ” It was just a very sweet relationship. At that time, if you just held hands, it was very serious. And we did hold hands a lot”.

Magdalene Morgan died in February, 2012.

1940s Tupelo school grounds “Elvis likes you” was the playground taunt to make girls cry.

 

Bill E. Burke was a Memphis Reporter who covered Elvis’ early career – his slim volumes and columns have yet to be collected in a proper hard cover must own.

He watched Elvis change from the…

View original post 1,082 more words