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January 11, 2007
Shorties
The Guardian's books blog examines literary feuds.
Stylus offers a bluffers guide to David Sylvain.
Popmatters profiles John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats.
Still, despite the recent spat of autobiography, there is still a lot that we don’t know about Darnielle. I ask him to piece together a bit more of his life for me. “When I’d gotten my head together, I went to vocational school and became a psychiatric nurse,” he begins, picking up where We Shall All Be Healed left off. “While working in that field, I began to wish I’d studied literature formally: When I’d read books I’d wish that I had more to say about them than ‘Damn, that was awesome.’ So I went to Pitzer College in Claremont, where I studied English and classical studies. During this time, I started showing up at an open-mic night on campus and playing the songs I’d been writing. People seemed to like them, and things sort of took off from there.”
At Jewcy, author Neal Pollack explains why "marijuana improves the parenting experience."
see also: Pollack's Book Notes entry for his book, Alternadad.
Status Ain't Hood examines the Rock and Roll Fall of Fame's 2006 inductees by the hall's own standards.
The Telegraph calls for a national music fund in the UK.
I am not proposing radical new taxes, just some simple juggling of the enormous sums of money already washing about the system, redirecting a little of it into a national music fund with a remit to build cheap and affordable, well-stocked rehearsal spaces (among the biggest overheads for bands) and give discretionary grants (for, say, the purchase of equipment) to musicians upon application.
Twilight Singer Greg Dulli talks to Billboard about a possible Afghan Whigs reunion.
Enjoying the loose, collective-like atmosphere of Twilight Singers, Dulli warns fans not to expect a full-blown Whigs reunion. "I loved that session, and I love them," he says. "They're still my bros, and we still hang out. We had a blast, but after that blast was over, there was no 'Let's make a new album and go on tour.' No f*ckin' way. I don't look back. I did what I did, now I do what I do."
IGN interviews Ken Griffin of Favourite Sons.
The Arizona Republic lists "singers who act, or try to."
Time Out London examines the myth of the "unfilmable" novel.
Billboard announces the lineup for the country music Stagecoach festival, to be held the week before Coachella.
Dane101 interviews music blogger Ryan Matteson of Muzzle of Bees.
What is the most rewarding facet of writing on the internet?
Having the freedom to write about and share music that I really enjoy with friends as well as total strangers. It’s amazing how music can bring people together and introduce you to a world of new discoveries.
The New York Times reviews Martin Amis's new novel, House of Meetings.
After his embarrassing 2003 novel, “Yellow Dog” — a book that read like a parody of a Martin Amis novel, featuring gratuitous wordplay and a willfully perverse fascination with the seamy side of modern life — the author has produced what is arguably his most powerful book yet: a novel that subjugates his penchant for postmodern pyrotechnics to the demands of the story at hand, a novel that takes all the knowledge he accumulated in the course of researching “Koba” and transforms it, imaginatively, into the deeply moving story of two brothers who were interned at a slave labor camp in the arctic wastes of the Soviet Union.
NPR is streaming last night's Emily Haines Washington show.
Nominations are open for the ">seventh annual Weblog Awards (the Bloggies). Music blogs again have their own category, "best blog about music."
see also:
Largehearted Boy's favorite albums of 2006
2006 Year-end Music List Compilation
this week's CD & DVD releases
