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September 4, 2009
Shorties (TV on the Radio, James Ellroy, and more)
NME reports that TV on the Radio is taking a one year break.
In this YouTube video, James Ellroy discusses his new novel, Blood's a Rover.
The Houston Press lists its top 10 crushes on women in music.
Shanghaist interviews Handsome Furs.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune profiles singer-songwriter Mark Mallman.
SharpBrains explains how reading fiction helps our brains .
Free at Amazon MP3: the 16-track Deep Elm Records - Sampler No. 7 - Defending the Kingdom
NPR is streaming a July NYC performance by former Grandaddy frontman Jason Lytle.
Shelfari offers a glimpse of author Neil Gaiman's bookshelves.
In the Los Angeles Times, book critic Julia Keller explaines her love for graphic novels.
My reason for enjoying graphic novels, I must confess, is not nearly so grand. The truth is that too many years as a book critic have threatened to turn me into a reading machine. I read too fast. I mow down rows of type like a scythe murdering a field. With a graphic novel, however, I'm forced to slow down. I can't rush. I can't go hell-for-leather across the page. I have to consider both the images and the words. I have to linger. I have to let things sink in. I have to learn all over again how to savor.
Pop Tarts Suck Toasted lists the top 10 musical moments on television.
NPR recommends Masterpiece Comics, a comics collections that blends literary masterpieces with comic book characters.
MoMuPl is an online movie soundtrack player.
Chromewaves celebrates its 7th anniversary with a list of "desert island discs" of the past seven years.
Portland's Shaky Hands make a mixtape at Magnet.
USA Today offers an interactive calendar of fall book releases.
The Tin House blog interviews Zak Smith, author of the memoir, We Did Porn.
MS: Are there any memoirs or other books that influenced your writing of We Did Porn?
ZS: I mean, obviously I like Pynchon. I really like Martin Amis. But there were two people I was looking at specifically with We Did Porn: the first one I was looking at was this surrealist or science fiction writer. His name is Michael John Harrison. He wrote a book called Viriconium, in the seventies. It’s just full of this amazing language, and I realized when I was reading it that he refers offhand to the elements of his science fiction world in such a way that it feels lived in. He doesn’t explain them, he doesn’t go, “This is why there’s a man with three heads.” It’s just there, just happens to be off to the side, and that seems to me a really effective way to talk about porn. Because I don’t know that much about the business compared to people who have been in it for years, and I don’t have more information than, say, Jenna Jamison does—and she already wrote a book. But I can communicate what it’s like to be in that atmosphere. Like it’s all real, all that stuff that happens here is true, but at the same time there’s all these details which are surreal, which are sort of just in the margins, they just establish that the porn world’s rules aren’t like the rules in everyday life.
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also at Largehearted Boy:
daily mp3 downloads
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
weekly music & DVD release lists
tags: music books popculture indie news
