Hey, long overdue congrats to Melissa Maerz, who won first place in the 2005 Association of Alternative Newspapers Music Criticism division. Read an interview here with Maerz, where she was asked:
How do you incorporate your opinion of an artist in a review without sounding preachy if you like them or cruel if you don't?
okay. as someone who's spent a lot of time thinking about it, clap your hands say yeah's Alec Ounsworth does not sound like david byrne, really. or thom yorke. he is these things: whiny. ragged. treble-y. which are often used to describe both of them. but then there's all the other words.
but here, today i have real news. le tigre broke up. discuss.
The Auteur Issue of Stop Smiling is out. Yes yes, I'm stumping, but it's pretty damn genius, as usual. Check out Andy Beta's awesome Jack Nitzsche feature - I was blown away when I got it.
The new Blood on the Wall sounds like the true wounded crackhead soul of Williamsburg, I mean, read this (from their press kit):
you know, if there's one thing in this world that my blog really *isn't* trying to promote, it's...the inflation of the male phallus (by anything more than one's one body) and so, i have yes, dear readers in the flesh, changed my comments section.
Did i mention that i've started writing for associated press? they just launched a new, mostly-web oriented wire service for all types of reporting - including cultural reporting - and I've written two pieces for them.
Maybe you've seen these excellent Banana Republican stickers around NYC and out and about. You should email this guy and ask him for some to put up. (Reminds me of the no-alien stickers that seemed to circle endlessly in the zine community of the mid-late 90s, or...obey, but must less obviously design-y)