Things I Said on March 13

2012: Amusing email just came in from Expedia: “Want to get out of Austin? See our last-minute fares.” (SXSW week — Excellent timing!) 2016: So judging from the New York Times Sunday magazine’s annual music issue, I guess no metal songs “tell us where music is going.” (Nor any Latin ones unless Pitbull counts or…

A Central Texas Music Road Trip

Austin has long trumpeted itself as the Live Music Capital of the World, and for years it’s been the fastest growing big city in the United States. And that’s just residents. Every spring, close to 300,000 music, film and tech enthusiasts travel to South By Southwest; increase that population by half, and you’ve got the…

Pazz & Jop Product Reports, 2017

As far as I can tell, May 2017 was when I first started posting these more-or-less monthly report cards on facebook, demonstrating my obessive-compulsiveness for anybody who inexplicably still doubted its existence. If you can’t figure out what the lists and grades are about because they look totally cryptic and you hate math and need…

Pazz & Jop Product Reports, 2018

Finally figured out how to unearth these on facebook. Same drill as 2019 (which probably includes some late-breaking 2018 releases I didn’t annotate as such at the time), 2020 (which includes a handful I’ll list in the comments) and beyond — turn of the ’80s Village Voice style: 8 = A, 7 = A-, 5…

Lego Movie vs. Eric Church

More overrated: The Lego Movie or new Eric Church album? (Leaning toward the one we actually got suckered into paying money for over the one I got sent for free in the mail; maybe that’s not fair.) I felt really bad for taking my daughter to the movie. It was mostly like watching a video…

Things I Said on February 8

2013: Have been giving my daughter 10-minute chess lessons when I pick her up from pre-school, on the large-pieces board there. Today, when we went to her cubby to gather her stuff after we finished, she thanked me for “showing me how the knight moves.” Wonder if Bob Seger’s kids ever thanked him for that.…

Turn My Swag On

Got a heavy and quite lovely 14″ x 14″ x 3 1/2″ hinged wooden box in the mail from Warners Nashville today with a big “AM” woodcut on the front and vinyl and (sleeveless) CD versions of Ashley Monroe’s *Like A Rose* (my #2 album of the year) bubble-wrapped inside plus a very soft and…

Country reviews, 2006-’11

Gary Allan, Set You Free Gary Allan has long been one of country’s most velvet-voiced beautiful losers. But on Set Me Free he lets the crazy out, howling psychobilly graveyard threats in “Bones,” interrupting a recovery meeting church organ to blame mental ghosts in “It Ain’t The Whiskey,” vegetating in his hotel room while college…

Mark Stewart review, 2012

Kid Rock review, 2012

I’ve written about him as much as any musical performer out there starting in the late ’90s, including an extremely long Village Voice piece on Eminem and him that was re-printed in my third book. I was even asked to write his authorized biography (can’t say that about any other artist) when I was a…