• I’m on Vacation

    Gorg­ing myself on Car­oli­na BBQ and seafood. Enjoy­ing the beau­ti­ful weath­er and water. Savor­ing every moment with my family.  Down­side? Pret­ty much burned to a crisp. I’m not the life­guard and farm­hand I used to be. Times like this make me wish I worked outside!

  • The Return of Rockism?

    Pitch­fork may have done a good job of includ­ing dance music in their top 200 tracks of the 1990s, but a cer­tain some­one was con­spic­u­ous­ly absent. Have you ever heard of a record­ing artist named Garth Brooks? How about Sha­nia Twain? Must I even men­tion Brit­ney Spears? I real­ly loved their picks, but they struck…

  • Pitchfork’s Top Track of the 1990s

    What? You were expect­ing “Sum­mer Babe?” I spent the bet­ter part of the day talk­ing about how fun­ny it’d be if the top 20 of their list were just crammed with tracks like this. The mem­o­ries came flood­ing back. Remem­ber Dish­wal­la? Could “Tubthump­ing” make the top 20? For my mon­ey, it’s a shame that they won’t. If…

  • My First Indie Rock Album

    Lest you think I’m a total wee­nie for admit­ting that I liked some maudlin tunes, my first indie rock album was Codeine’s The White Birch. I bought it at Repo Records after run­ning two miles from Haver­ford Col­lege in the mid­dle of a track meet. I ran four miles round trip to buy a Sub…

  • A Word on Urban Redevelopment

    It’s not a social good in and of itself.  I also won­der if folks who are all devel­op­ment uber alles still con­cern them­selves with things like “sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” which seems to be a watch­word among the gen­tri­fy­ing classes. The knee-jerk reac­tion to build things like music venues in blight­ed areas is tan­ta­mount to “drill, baby, drill.”…