Well...there's this interview with the biographer of Ian Dury, whose life is the subject of a new biopic starring Andy Serkis.

Also this music review from the same website.

And my latest column for the official website of Bay Area-based epic fantasy novelist Tad Williams.

Highly recommended: the confounding but braintwisting - and even intermittently  ( Read more... )

...of shiny, happy, brown lipstick wearing, French blue shirted, no count, no talent philistines who have habitually known and enjoyed the carnal knowledge of rats.

Not a good day.  Got on a MUNI bus packed to the gills, and could barely fit in at the front.  Two stops later, I asked the driver if I could get off and try to get on in the back which looked less crowded. He said OK.

Upon doing so, I got into a shoving match with two or three paid-in-full members of the street trash community, got called names ( Read more... )

...and how's by you?

A new one, enjoy or not...

POEM FOR HAITI RELIEF

Today
greasy rain pisses down
these inclined streets
cascading into the scurrying dissatisfied
San Francisco downtown.

This won’t help the homeless.
This won’t help the helpless.

Everybody hurts now in Haiti
yet bone china bone idol karaoke
won’t help either.

So allow yourselves a brief backpat,
overfed ( Read more... )

Hello all:

Just a quickun to let you know that my debut as music reviewer/scribe/hack for the POPMATTERS entertainment website is now viewable!

Here 'tis.

With more surely forthcoming, the USPS willing.

Also at work on a new chapbook for the Kendra Steiner folk, set to fly in November.  Specifics on the way.

Birthday next ( Read more... )

The great British post-Punk cultural historian and scribe Jon Savage does it again. A fascinating and inticingly detailed piece about British pop music magazines of the 60's, in London's Guardian paper, out this week.

Me, I've already added titles like RAVE and FABULOUS to my ongoing list of vintage music mags to keep peeled for when trolling Ebay ( Read more... )

As if 2009 hasn't already been a lousy year for musicians, just in the past handful of weeks we've lost Les Paul, Willy DeVille and now, this weekend, the awesomely brilliant Jim Dickinson.

I can count on my hand the people who made rock/pop music history that I genuinely would have loved the chance to sit down and shoot the whatever with for an ( Read more... )

 
I don't get it. Does anyone - anyone?? - rate this Chuck Klosterman guy as any kind of a writer?  I would genuinely like to know.

I managed to successfully avoid reading this avidly populist culture vulture, I mean, journo's stuff for some time.

Until two occurrences:

One, being involved in the LITERARY DEATH MATCH in S.F. a few months back and one ( Read more... )

One: watching JEOPARDY last night, one of my main forms of mental aerobics. It's the Teen Tournament this week, and one of the answers had to do with Miley Cyrus of Hannah Montana infamy.

None of the teen contestants got it.

Then there's this bit of Punk-era wackiness.

And not only but also, this pairing of a now departed comedic genius and a ( Read more... )