Destin Pfaff came into the business of love reluctantly. It’s not that he doesn’t believe in the power of attraction, or the institution of marriage. (For the record he’s engaged, and the happy couple have a 7 month-old son.) It’s just that a career in sales didn’t appeal, and it never really occurred to him that one could make a living — and a good one at that — selling access to something that most people hope to find for free, namely a soul mate.
Ari-Up (born Ariane Forster, 1962), of the highly influential and 100% original all-girl punk rock / reggae band The Slits, sadly died today (Wednesday, Oct 20th).
Her mother, Nora Forster, and stepfather, John Lydon, released the following statement.
A mere two months after the dissolution of The Smiths, former New York Dolls fan club president Steven Patrick Morrissey released a single of his own, the now-classic “Suedehead” in February of 1988. The song was a bigger UK hit than any of his previous work with the band, and the defensively sardonic debut solo LP Viva Hate arrived that March. A falling out with producer and collaborator Stephen Street put plans to record a second album indefinitely on hold. As such, Morrissey released a string of hold-over singles: “The Last of the Famous International Playboys,” “Interesting Drug,” and “Ouija Board, Ouija Board” all in 1989. Critical backlash at “Ouija Board” -as well as an ongoing royalty dispute with former Smiths band makes Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke – nearly derailed Morrissey’s solo career altogether.
David Arquette made a name for himself in the Scream trilogy and since then has had a long career in television and film. But for his directorial debut, The Tripper, Arquette has gone back to the horror genre, this time infusing it with political overtones. The Tripper is about a Ronald Reagan-obsessed serial killer that targets a bunch of hippies.
There are only a handful of comedians whose album releases qualify as cultural events, but Patton Oswalt is one of them. Tracks from his new CD, My Weakness is Strong are already being dissected by comedy enthusiasts in coffee shops around the country and picked apart on social networks like Twitter for the exquisite one-liners, the acutely-lobbed political grenades, and moments of inspired lunacy that compare to his memorable tangle with a screaming heckler on his last album, Werewolves and Lollipops. That CD, released during the death throes of the Bush administration, was widely hailed for its stance of supreme indignation and undercurrent of soul-weariness that mirrored the national mood at the time, and cemented Oswalts reputation as a comedian who loses no ground by going topical and getting angry.
“I do try like hell to not be ashamed. But, sometimes I am, I have to admit,” says New Jersey-born comedienne, actress and activist, Janeane Garofalo. We’ve been talking for close to 45 minutes – mostly about TV, politics, the media, and the toxicity of contemporary pop culture. As I switch the tape recorder off and the conversation winds down, we briefly discuss what Garofalo herself turns to in order to unwind, which is the source of her current state of angst.
“Sometimes I fall dreadfully short, behavior-wise, activity-wise. Sometimes I’ll watch bad television, sometimes I’ll read crappy magazines and I’m ashamed, because I’ve done it,” she admits. The New York resident, who recently released a new stand up DVD entitled If You Will, is currently living outside of her comfort zone in a Los Angeles hotel while filming the Criminal Minds spin-off Suspect Behavior (which also stars Academy Award winning actor Forest Whitaker).
Indie folk troubadour Sufjan Stevens has a new album called The Age of Adz and despite what the iTunes Store and Amazon.com will tell you, it is not “alternative rock.” The Age of Adz is a big, loud, messy electronic record with gurgling, buzzing synths and sputtering, almost glitchcore/IDM drum programming. To say it diverges from Sufjan’s previously established sound – alternately precious and pretentious acoustic pop with a predilection for Christ and state trivia – is a gross understatement that leads me to an all-too common musicologist dilemma: What type of music is this, exactly?
With the iTunes Library all but replacing the traditional wooden shelf strewn with LPs, CDs, and a stray cassette tape or too, anal-retentive music geeks find themselves in a perpetual pickle: Right click to update an album’s info and you’ve got to decide then and there what genre category this belongs to. How specific should one get? Is “80s Manchester post-punk” really necessary, or will “rock” suffice? Additionally, what do these genre and subgenre tags even mean – really? When forced to, few record collectors can really offer a distinction between, let’s say, “shoegaze” and “dream pop” or “IDM” and “glitchcore.” The intense breakdown of musical styles leads to a massive barrage of labels and movements, one that’s maddening to keep straight. Not to mention the plain fact that not all bands (certainly not the best ones) really adhere to a single sound. There’s also economics to consider – Sonic Youth and R.E.M. signed to major labels half-way into their careers, so is it a misnomer to consider them “indie” or “alternative”?
