Author: J T. Ramsay

  • In Praise of Second Chances

    We had this series at Sty­lus Mag­a­zine called “On Sec­ond Thought” and I’m por­ing over the archives tonight. Wish I could right­ly say how many bands I dis­missed sim­ply because Pitch­fork hyped them to the moon. Have you real­ly ever lis­tened to that band called Black Kids? You have?! Wild… When that col­umn was­n’t ded­i­cat­ed…

  • Can You Find Craft Beer in Fishtown?

    My eyes rolled very hard when I read this bit from Michael Klein. Fish­town needs anoth­er fan­cy beer place like a hole in the head. I may be will­ing to give it a pass if the food isn’t just anoth­er run-of-the-mill gas­trop­ub as they say, but the thought of squeez­ing into Moe’s does­n’t real­ly appeal…

  • Enjoying the 2011 Philadelphia Phillies

    Love when my reg­u­lar morn­ing reads include Beer­lea­guer, Crash­burn Alley, Phillies Nation and more of my favorite Phillies blogs. Fol­low­ing the games on Twit­ter is a treat, although Chris @LONG_DRIVE isn’t in mid­sea­son form, yet. Miss check­ing the Fight­ins for all the great flubs. I caught a bad typo on the new Phillies score­board at…

  • In Praise of Ex.fm

    Remem­ber when music start-ups were such a source of frus­tra­tion for me? Now I real­ly enjoy some of them! Chief among them is ex.fm, which my friend Mark showed me just the oth­er day. Pos­si­bly the most use­ful Google Chrome exten­sion that does­n’t involve a Google product. What does it do? It sniffs out all…

  • First Quarter Music Report

    Lov­ing this album. Feel like J. Mas­cis’ voice has always cap­tured that spir­it of not real­ly try­ing, which was the apoth­e­o­sis of all things good in the ’90s. Along those lines, I’m catch­ing up with Wild Flag, too. ’90s nos­tal­gia real­ly has trans­formed into some­thing else entire­ly, has­n’t it? Real­ly like the new Moun­tain Goats, too.…