Love Letter to Philadelphia
From the Wall Street Journal: Love Letter to Philadelphia. "I saw this as an opportunity to reclaim the space on these rooftops and reexamine graffiti," said Mr. Powers, who grew up in West Philadelphia but now lives in New York. A former graffiti artist, Mr. Powers used the neighborhood as his illegal canvas as a teenager and young adult. Now 41, he has had his work shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art in ...
August 28, 2009
Happy 1st Birthday to Us! Our first issue was published on August 29, 2008. Here's to many more! Whither the Music Mag? By John Stoehr What does the much-hyped death of print journalism mean for the music magazine? An Interstate Book Club By Jenni Simmons and Rebecca Tirrell Talbot Two staff writers talk about using BookGlutton to read together - in Texas and Illinois. The Four-...
An Interstate Book Club
Browsing through a used bookstore a few weeks ago, I [Rebecca] came across mysterious handwritten notes in Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk. These notes were written not in the margins, but between lines of text. Not only that, they weren't about the book-they looked more like a poem. Had someone grabbed this book in the dark, thinking it was a notebook? Or, was the poem doing a duet with Annie Dillard? Mar...
Whither the Music Mag?
Few things get Quincy Jones riled up like death. First, it was Michael Jackson's. Then, it was Vibe's. The monthly magazine covering black pop culture was shuttered suddenly last month 16 years after Jones co-founded it. The private equity firm that owned it failed to find a buyer. That was the only way to keep it solvent. The next day, after the news emerged, Jones vowed to revive it: "They just messed my magazin...
Four Year Hibernation
A four-year absence is a risk for any band, especially in a musical climate as diverse - dare I say saturated - as today's. It's more than enough time to fade into distant memory, a once-fresh album turned into another of nostalgia's trophies, another rising star fallen from the sky and rendered obsolete by those more eager to shine their lights, even if they don't shine as bright. That said, four years can also be...
The Epigram’s Return
From The Smart Set: The Return of the Epigram. Though Twitter may be guilty for promoting (or at least encouraging) a short attention span, forced brevity is not entirely a bad thing. Humans have been perfecting the art of keeping it short since the beginning of literature. I, for one, am starting to see Twitter as a modern day epigram generator....
Web-Based Patronage, Dollar by Dollar
From the New York Times: A Few Dollars at a Time, Patrons Support Artists on the Web. Earl Scioneaux III is not a famous music producer like Quincy Jones. He is a simple audio engineer in New Orleans who mixes live albums of local jazz musicians by day and creates electronic music by night. He had long wanted to pursue his dream of making his own album that married jazz and electronica, but he had no easy way to rai...
