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June 14, 2008
Shorties
Billboard interviews Neil Young about the documentary, CSNY: Deja Vu.
Q: One of the film's most powerful scenes shows Atlanta fans angrily filing out of the venue, not before telling you to go to hell, and that's putting it kindly. When you look back on the tour, are there faces and middle fingers in particular that stick out?
Neil Young: "I remember some faces. There's one guy I remember for sure, and he's not in the movie. This was a harrowing experience at times, and it's not an experience that I would like to repeat. I think it was a one-off. I think if I did this kind of thing for the rest of my life, I'd become like CNN, and I don't really respect that very much. It's like the same thing on a loop. I don't see the need for that. I like to be a full-length program, not a repeating segment."
The Toronto Star makes a Star Trek mixtape.
The New York Times reviews (and excerpts) the new essay collection by David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed in Flames.
The Minneapolis City Pages offers tips for attendees at Sedaris readings.
Paste recaps day two of Bonnaroo.
The Globe and Mail reviews Michael Chabon's essay collection, Maps and Legends.
Inevitably, it's Chabon's eye, his mastery of those million marvellous quotidian things, that makes so many of these pieces hum. Observing, say, the union of art and commerce: "the quickening force, neglected, derided, and denied, of money and the getting of it on a ready imagination." Or his beloved comics: "the literary equivalent of bubblegum cards, to be poked into the spokes of a young mind, where they would produce a satisfying - but entirely bogus - rumble of pleasure."
The A.V. Club interviews author Cory Doctorow.
The Deadbolt Feature lists "5 Marvel Super Hero Movies We Want to See (and 5 We Don't)."
IGN chooses a Weezer "ultimate mix."
The Northwest Herald interviews Bettye Lavette.
How was it going back to Alabama to record “The Scene Of The Crime?”
Oh, it was fine. I think that because we named the CD “The Scene Of The Crime” that people put too much into it. It’s kind of an insider story. I just went down to Muscle Shoals 30 years ago and recorded an album in four days, and I never had been back again until now. Muscle Shoals really didn’t hold anything for me, it holds a lot for those people who got all those hit records from down there – Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett. It never had anything for me, but a bad memory.
Metromix New York interviews Michael Stipe of REM.
Rolling Stone's Capri Lounge editors' blog test drives the Pixies Doolittle Rock Band release.
While John was magically transforming into Frank Black a few feet to my left, I handled David Lovering's parts on "Monkey" and wondered why everyone says he's such a great drummer. Then I switched from "easy" to "medium" for "Debaser" and said "aha." Moving over to bass to pretend I was Mrs. John Murphy (a frequent pastime), I was reminded how much Kim Deal's thumping basslines anchor songs like "Tame" and "Hey" when I dropped a few notes and screwed everyone up — which highlights a great point about Rock Band: there's a much higher shame quotient than on Guitar Hero, where you're really just ruining your own good time if you suck.
The Village Voice's Sound of the City blog reviews day one of the Bonnaroo music festival.
Bullet Points lists the 9 nerdiest moments in rap.
Salon reviews Salman Rushdie's latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence.
This is the most assured Rushdie novel in many years, largely because it transpires entirely within the never-land of endlessly multiplying stories that he rightly regards as his imaginative home. Even the (on-balance) successful "Shalimar the Clown" had several dreadful sections set in Los Angeles -- garish and rickety, as are most of Rushdie's attempts to write about contemporary life. His is an art of lavish, brocaded surfaces and minimal psychological depth. His best books keep perhaps one toe in the novel, while otherwise wandering freely through more venerable narrative genres: folklore, saga and romance. Besides Ariosto and "The Arabian Nights," another influence Rushdie tips his hat to in "The Enchantress of Florence" is the vast Indian oral tradition surrounding Hamza, an uncle of the prophet Mohammed and the hero of countless popular tales.
At Reason, Cory Doctorow recommends three political books for young adults.
Drowned in Sound offers a track-by-track review of Beck's new album, Modern Guilt.
also at Largehearted Boy:
2007 online music lists
Daily Downloads
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
this week's CD releases
tags: music books popculture indie news
