Banging in the New Year

I don’t remember ever hearing New Year’s Eve (much less Christmas Eve, or New Year’s Eve Eve) firecrackers while growing up in suburban Detroit, where I’m pretty sure such booming was strictly a 4th of July thing. Not until I moved in the ’90s to live among apparent kin of Philadelphia mummers, belsnicklers and calithumpians…

Things I Said on May 12

2016: Upcoming metal album (June 8, according to Metal Storm website): Eximperituserqethhzebibšiptugakkathšulweliarzaxułum – Prajecyrujučy Sinhuliarnaje Wypramieńwańnie Daktryny Absaliutnaha J Usiopahłynaĺnaha Zła Skroź Šaścihrannuju Pryzmu Sîn-Ahhī-Erība Na Hipierpawierchniu Zadyjakaĺnaha Kaŭčęha Zasna. Any good?? Encyclopaedia Metallum Metal Archives info: “Country of origin: Belarus; Location: Minsk; Genre: Technical Death Metal; Lyrical themes: Sumerian/Babylonian Mysticism, Occultism, Annihilation, Death; Current…

150 Best Albums of 1957/’58/’59

Norman Mailer somehow managed to get through “The White Negro,” the monumental essay he published at just over 9000 words in Dissent in the autumn of 1957, without even once mentioning Elvis Presley (whose “Don’t Be Cruel” had just topped the pop and country and r&b charts in 1956), Jack Kerouac (whose On the Road…

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…

Double Standard Rock

Written for the two-issue fanzine created by my then-wife, now-ex Martina Kominiarek (then Eddy) and her fellow Philadelphia librarian Kay Wisniewski, a few years before the divorce. Read in whatever foreshadowing you want. Surprised I didn’t include some version of it in Accidental Evolution — it would fit right in. Maybe it’s an outtake. Martina’s…

Rolling Minstrels and Troubadours I

Thoughts out loud, ponderings in process, talking blues clues and bonehead conspiracy theories from the second half of the 21st Century’s first decade, about American music from 40 to 100 years before that, peripherally if not directly related to “country.”