In Praise of Some Guy Cinema

When people talk about action movies, they tend to focus on the form the genre hardened into after the mid-to-late ’80s — pictures about big, steely-eyed heroes whose generally ruthless efficiency is mirrored by the minimal plots scaffolded together to support their explosion-fueled, quip-dusted adventures. Schwarzenegger, Seagal, and Stallone are three

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Be Here Now

David Mead

Cobra Pumps

I had my first broadband line installed in 1999, just in time to surf the wild mp3 frontier in the heady months before the law stepped in and started cutting filesharing services off at their grubby knees. Napster — and later, to a greater extent for me personally, Audiogalaxy — opened the

Music

Old Is New

In the 1996 film Big Night, Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub play brothers who own a slowly failing Italian restaurant in 1950s New Jersey. It’s a premise ripe with comedy, and Tucci — who co-wrote and co-directed — takes frequent advantage of those possibilities, playing up the dynamic between his pragmatic

Strings, cont'd

Like a lot of sad, melodramatic kids, I spent large portions of my youth clinging to music as a lifeline. And almost as quickly as the stuff burrowed its way into my being, I wanted to beam it back out: As far back as third or fourth grade, I can

Max Headroom

Reboot

Nostalgia gets kind of a bad rap these days — and understandably so, given that it seems to be in the process of swallowing our pop culture and political discourse. But I’m of the opinion that you don’t get to the other side of 40 without coming to appreciate

Buffalo Tom

Quiet and Peace

Context is a crucial — and, as far as I’m concerned, underappreciated — component of the way we experience art. There’s a long list of books, records, and films I once loved madly, only to cool on them later for reasons I can’t quite define, and vice versa; it’

Paul Newman

Trajectory

During one evening of my willfully misspent youth, my parents sat me down for a screening of Cool Hand Luke, hoping to show me what happens to smart-assed malcontents who refuse to straighten up and fly right. Rather than a sobering life lesson, the movie taught me something even more

Aaron Lee Tasjan

Silver Tears

Thanks to No Depression‘s year-end roundup, I spent the day acquainting myself with Aaron Lee Tasjan’s Silver Tears — a fine set of songs I’m just now hearing even though it was released in late 2016. Truly, we are living in a land of musical plenty.

Bach

Alive

Ten years ago today, I spearheaded the launch of Popdose, a pop culture site dedicated to the idea that every piece of art is worth discussing and the fervent hope that all of us would someday be remunerated for our efforts. To my everlasting shame, I failed to make that

Emitt Rhodes

Grued

I didn’t set out to be a writer. Like countless others who’ve gone on to carve out a living in cultural commentary, my youthful dreams centered around making art myself; at first, I only wrote about others’ work because it was easier than working past the obstacles that

Aretha Franklin

Records

Weeks and weeks ago, I was tagged in one of those “name 10 albums that have stuck with you” Facebook posts. You aren’t supposed to think too much about the records you name, but what fun is a list without thousands of words of text? Billy Joel, The Stranger

Ferguson

Never Die Young

When James Taylor released his 12th album, Never Die Young, in January of 1988, I was 13 — just the right age to have little to no awareness of his place in the rock firmament. He’d started coming out of his mid-period slump with his previous effort, 1985’s That’

idiot box

The Division Bell

I don’t care what’s included, there’s absolutely no possible configuration of Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell that could justify charging $135 for a deluxe box. I’m admittedly not a huge Floyd fan, and my objections stem more from the album’s overall dullness than any

Sonny Knight and the Lakers

Thank Goodness Sonny Knight's "Still Here"

I’d never heard of Secret Stash Records before the ever-indispensable Heavy Soul Brutha hipped me to the existence of Sonny Knight and the Lakers’ new I’m Still Here LP, but based on the aforementioned evidence, I’m convinced that the Minneapolis label is doing the Lord’s work.

Lennon and Maisy

That's What's Up

There’s just something about sibling harmony.

Charlie Hunter

Hunting the Hunter

There are artists whose music I love, but whose output I find too prolific to follow — guys like Bill Mallonee, who I think is a genius songwriter but blasts records out at a bewildering pace, or Charlie Hunter, who seems to eat, sleep, and breathe with his trademark seven- and

authenticity

Make It Your Own

The old man reached under his bed and pulled out an ancient cardboard guitar case. Opening it slowly, he removed the oldest Gibson guitar I had ever seen and strummed it once with his giant brown thumb. “I gots it tuned like a banjo — the fourth string down. You tune

Strings

The ukulele might be the official instrument for YouTube cover artists and Zooey Deschanel wannabes, but I’ll tell you something else it’s good for: Aging writers who have always loved music but have never had enough patience to develop any actual musical skill. If you know me, you

Chet Baker

Deeper Still

“Man, you suck.” These are supposedly the words spoken by Miles Davis to Chet Baker when Baker, after straining through a gig with Davis in attendance, walked up to introduce himself. In his book Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker, author James Gavin traces the tale

Leo Bud Welch

Sabougla Voices

“Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of my art,” wrote my friend Arend Anton in a recent Facebook post. “I used to ride the waves of creativity, and this convinced me that art was spontaneous and uncontrollable. Now that I’m a bit older, the waves

Shy Dog

Hey, you’re a shy dog, but I can see You feel the very same as me You don’t think like people do Anyone can see I’m the same way too When it comes to relationships, I’ve never been much of a stand-up-and-fight kind of guy. When

Harry Nilsson

Many Rivers to Cross

I love a good rock ‘n’ roll loser. There’s nothing quite like the ragged glory of a rock song that’s almost there — the time’s a little off, the vocals are straining to hit the melody without quite getting there, maybe there are a few bum notes from

Minnesota

I made Minnesota my home tonight It’s not like the picture in my mind ‘Cause I was so alone it killed tonight I’d tell any soul…if I could find one –the Push Stars, “Minnesota” “Minnesota” For someone who has often been ruinously, stupidly impulsive, I’m actually

Chicago

Old Interview: Peter Cetera, October 1, 1992

Here’s one from the archives — one of my first major interviews, conducted with erstwhile Chicago frontman Peter Cetera while he was out promoting his fourth solo album, World Falling Down. This is kind of like looking at a dorky old photograph for me, but it was a thrill at