“Show Me Some Love”
Honey Dijon & Channel Tres
Feat. Sadie Walkier
out now on Black Girl Magic
on Classic Music
.
Archives for November 2022
Excerpt From The Philosophy of Modern Song: Chapter 9, My Generation
CHAPTER 9
MY GENERATION
THE WHO
Originally released as a single
(Decca, 1965)
Written by Pete Townshend
.
THIS IS A SONG THAT DOES NO FAVORS FOR anyone, and casts doubt on everything.
.
In this song, people are trying to slap you around, slap you in the face, vilify you. They’re rude and they slam you down, take cheap shots. They don’t like you because you pull out all the stops and go for broke. You put your heart and soul into everything and shoot the works, because you got energy and strength and purpose. Because you’re so inspired they put the whammy on, they’re allergic to you, and they have hard feelings. Just your very presence repels them. They give you frosty looks and they’ve had enough of you, and there’s a million others just like you, multiplying every day. [Read more…]
Yehonatan Koenig’s Subversion of the Ordinary
Knowing Not Knowing, at Matt Drey Arts (presenting with the Kava Collective)
by Mat Gleason
The art of Yehonatan Koenig is a subatomic soiree, every mark-making molecule involved in contributing to a higher purpose along the way.
There is form and structure revealed here, an elegant point in the digressions of a thousand or more marks, each its own act of lending to the whole. [Read more…]
Songbook of a Bygone Dead: Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song
Reviewed by Dan Chiasson
The Philosophy of Modern Song
by Bob Dylan
Simon & Schuster, 352pp., $28.93
NYR
Bob Dylan’s new book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, is a kind of music-appreciation course open to auditors and members of the general public. It is best savored one chapter, one song, at a time, while listening to the accompanying playlists, which its readers have assembled on music-streaming platforms. Professor Dylan lectures a little, then you press play. [Read more…]
Words To Wrap Around A Dying Brother
Smoking the Bible
Reviewed by Rhony Bhopla
Smoking the Bible
by Chris Abani
Copper Canyon Press, 96pp., $15.99
HR
Chris Abani’s autobiographical book of poems, Smoking the Bible, centers on the relationship of two brothers growing up in Nigeria with an Igbo father and an English mother. The poems, which incorporate the Igbo language along with references to West African rituals, reveals the devotion of a sibling who has become his brother’s keeper as he succumbs to cancer. Displacement, violence at home, civil unrest, and neocolonial forms of subjugation are all running themes in this accomplished, elegiac collection. [Read more…]
Communication Breakdown: Grant Wallace, His Heirs & the Legacy of a Forgotten Genius
Grant Wallace: Over the Psychic Radio
at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, NYC (through 3 December 2022)
By Michael Bonesteel
Freelance writer and editor Deborah Coffin of Albany, California, was in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley in 1997 when she first encountered street musician Brian Wallace at a party. “I had a friend who knew Brian,” she recalled. “Brian was obsessing about my friend because her red hair reminded him of this drawing by his grandfather, and he wanted her to see it.”
That may sound like a rather lame variation on the old pick-up line “come up and see my etchings,” but Brian was specifically thinking about his grandfather Grant Wallace’s portrait of the ravishing celestial goddess “Zu La Zu Lé.” [Read more…]
For Its Sweetness, We Turn The Ear
“Help”
new from Rozi Plain
video directed by Noriko Okaku
The Joshua Tree Talk
A Conversation on Dzogchen
C von Hassett & Rachel Reid Wilkie
at Joshua Tree Retreat Center
Louise Bourgeois: What Is The Shape of This Problem?
at University of Southern California, Fisher Museum of Art. (through 3 December 3, 2022)
Reviewed by Margaret Lazzari
Louise Bourgeois is widely recognized for her sculptures and installations, but Louise Bourgeois: What is The Shape of This Problem is a wonderful opportunity to immerse yourself in her perhaps-lesser-known prints, fabric work and writings. This exhibit contains over 100 works that are personal, experimental, and revealing. The installation is dense and full of relatively small works, mostly hung salon style. It takes patience to go through the exhibit, but it is rewarding for its psychological complexity and conceptual richness. [Read more…]
Ingesting Liberation Through Song
New work from Special Interest
“Midnight Legend”
ft. Mykki Blanco
Moonage Daydream Conveys More Myth Than Man
Moonage Daydream
Dir. Brett Morgan
Reviewed by Nicholas Goldwin
As one of the greatest shapeshifters in the expansive history of rock music, it seems only fitting that the documentary with David Bowie as its subject never seems content to express the trials, tribulations and artistic triumphs of Bowie in any one fixed way. This is expressed through the film in its alternations between rare footage of early concerts and interviews, expressive animated renderings of the science-fiction imagery laden throughout Bowie’s oeuvre and various examples of Bowie’s own artwork, both visual and musical. In doing this, Morgen allows the true scope of Bowie’s career as an artist and innovator to be appreciated by the audience in a truly all-encompassing way. Yet despite the astounding variety of ways in which Bowie is portrayed in Moonage Daydream, there is nonetheless a disarming absence of any significant insight or depth given to Bowie as an individual. This makes the film’s attempt to give Bowie himself — the man, the individual — the spotlight seem lacklustre in execution, in that Morgen can’t seem to help but identify him as anything other than an icon. [Read more…]