Author: J T. Ramsay

  • The Principled Purge

    If you haven’t already seen it, Ian Rogers’ blog post on prun­ing Twit­ter is quite good. He fol­lowed me back when I wrote about dig­i­tal music; I don’t write about that any­more, ergo he unfol­lowed me. It makes all the sense in the world. Why is it so hard? I wrote Unfol­low­ing Is Hard back in…

  • Low — Do You Know How to Waltz?

    Just when I thought I could­n’t love Low any more, they go ahead and play a 30 minute ver­sion of “Do You Know How to Waltz?” It’s a polar­iz­ing piece of music, but I’m going to join a legion of drone fans and request it when they play Philadel­phia Sat­ur­day night at World Cafe.

  • Eleanor Friedberger — Personal Record

    I can’t believe I once hag­gled with Eleanor over the price of a Fiery Fur­naces t‑shirt in the front of the Khyber…and that she accept­ed $10 instead of $15. Even hard­er to believe it was that long ago that the Fiery Fur­naces were crit­i­cal dar­lings, play­ing packed rooms and mes­mer­iz­ing fans with Mat­t’s musi­cian­ship and Eleanor’s…

  • Goodbye, Letterly Street

    We go to set­tle­ment on our Let­ter­ly Street home in a few hours. Once it’s over, it’ll be the first time nei­ther Helen nor I have rent­ed or owned a prop­er­ty in the Philadel­phia area since we met in 1996. You were good to us, Let­ter­ly Street. Thanks for all the won­der­ful memories.

  • Overlooked Culture

    Maybe I’m fol­low­ing the wrong peo­ple on social media, but has the word “over­looked” lost all mean­ing as it per­tains to cul­ture? It seems to me that when we’re still print­ing spoil­er alerts for ten-year-old TV shows that “over­looked” has lost all explana­to­ry pow­er. Now when I see that word in a review, I roll…