Music
BILLY BRAGG: Content Over Style
By KK Kozik“The irony is that somehow I’ve built an entire career on working to change the world,” states Billy Bragg. Irony? That thankless job is what Bragg is known for.
Don’t Mind the Maggots
By Dann BakerBryan Waterman’s Marquee Moon and Cyrus R. K. Patell’s Some Girls were conceived in tandem: The authors, both humanities professors at N.Y.U., are friends who share a personal/professional fascination with New York punk/street culture of the 1970s. This twin portrait of New York’s halcyon rock era represents the fruit of their efforts.
In Exile on Main Street
By Geoffrey ClarfieldIn August 2005 the worst hurricane to hit the United States in a hundred years devastated the city of New Orleans. Eventually, the levees that held back the sea broke, much of the city was flooded, and thousands of people lost their homes and livelihoods.
OUTTAKES
By Steve DalachinskyNot since John Zorn’s Arcana project and Art Taylor’s Notes and Tones (which bassist William Parker says in his brief intro is the book that inspired him to do this project) has there been a book of interviews so vital, so down-to-earth, and so personal as this one.
Being Patti Smith
By Allyson Polsky McCabeWhen Patti Smith arrived in New York in the summer of ’67, she was self-consciously outside society. She slept in graveyards, shacked up with Robert Mapplethorpe at the Chelsea, and shamelessly pilfered art supplies to nurture Mapplethorpe’s creative spirit.
