As promised/threatened yesterday—and what a vibrant conversation yesterday, y’all!—I want to work through some impressions of The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2006), a pretty riveting documentary recommended to me by fcrp reader Steve. It turned out to be a great way to redeem a long stretch of otherwise exasperating insomnia last week. But you don’t [...]
So after the tough sledding of the past few days, it’s time for us all to frolic a bit in the shallow end of the cultural pool: it is, after all, still summer, and Labor Day’s just around the corner. Here, then, a parlor game: What are your ten favorite “rock movies”? That phrase wobbles [...]
Long after any- and everyone else interested had seen it, Robyn & I got the 2003 movie My Architect: A Son’s Journey from Netflix last week and gave it a look. Based on a (for me) outstanding premise—we’re going to learn more about the architect Louis Kahn and his famous friends!—the movie proceeds to disappoint [...]
[Just a reminder: this is the fourth in a five-part series exploring the greatness that is Radiohead. If you haven't read the first three, skip down the page to Saturday, June 12, and work your way forward.] Four quick time-cue beeps sweep us into “Paranoid Android.” If the popular long-running BBC radio program has taught [...]
[Final installment in a three-part posting, republishing an essay that first appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education last September.--KD] I’ve already suggested that for some of us, the appeal of the bad voice is that it could be ours; more generally, we respond to bad voices because they sound so frail, so human. There’s [...]
[The second of a three-part posting, republishing an essay that first appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education last September.--KD] Neil Young’s 1975 album Tonight’s the Night is the middle of three albums known as “the ditch trilogy,” made when Young drove himself into a deep, dark emotional ditch after the huge commercial success of [...]
[Starting today and continuing for the next two, I'm republishing an essay that first appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education last September, assuming that most readers of fake chinese rubber plant aren't also subscribers to the Chronicle. Hope you enjoy! --KD] At my high school—Taft High, Woodland Hills, Calif., also the alma mater of Jane [...]
Listening to the new Jimi Hendrix album a few weeks ago started me thinking about what we might call counterfactual recording sessions. The Righteous Brothers suggested back in 1973 that if there’s a rock & roll heaven, you know they’ve got a helluva band; I guess I’m hoping that they’ve got some incredible remixing facilities, [...]
So, it’s high time to bring this unpremeditated mini-thread on rock cover versions to a close—or at least to put it on pause for awhile. Hoping to make this all a bit more interactive, I thought I’d post my list of Top 10 covers, and invite y’all to post yours—or even individual entries—in Comments. I’m [...]
So, no big wind-up this time. Track 7, “My Body Is a Cage.” Few—none?—have ever accused The Arcade Fire of being insufficiently portentous. “My Body Is a Cave,” in this respect, is vintage AF: the big church organ just gets bigger and bigger as the song moves inexorably on; if you like this kind of [...]