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great essay about pavement, crooked rain, crooked rain, and being 22 (kinda). in his book is there god after prince?
Jan 26, 2024
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As a kid, Punk was everything to me. It was the anti-authoritarian lens through which I viewed everything. Even as I grew out of the music, the ideology still informed everything I did. As I got older and read more theory I started to view punk as infantile and puerile. A childish attempt at transgression. A baby spitting its dummy out.
A couple of years ago, a girl I was seeing gave me a copy of this book, and it rekindled my love for punk.
A sourfaced evisceration of the British state and the then-burgeoning tide of globalisation, this book is an Ode to Wally Hope, a man entrenched in the hippy moment who died as a result of his imprisonment in a mental institution. Through his activism and organising of free parties, Wally was much beloved and his death made of him a martyr for anarcho-punks everywhere. This book doesn't pull its punches and while some of what Rimbaud preaches seems like common knowledge today in the early eighties it would have been revolutionary. I can't recommend this, or the album it was published to accompany (Crass' Christ - the Album) enough.
It's short, if not so sweet, and my copy lives in my back pocket at all times.
Jan 17, 2024
I think what i look for in a cover for a record is how well it can describe the sound and ethos of the music. this album cover is just as messy and frantic and DIY as the songs on this project. for that i love it.
Aug 21, 2024
This band quite literally changed my life (as opposed to a "Garden State" faux-changed my life scenario).
Later in life, I got to know guitarist Peter Buck (we were both living in Portland at the time and I now own one of his Rickenbacker 12-string guitars a result, ha) and came to appreciate their status as the Bartleby, the Scriveners of rock (you should Google the reference: “I would prefer not to”). I told Peter I began playing guitar because of “Chronic Town” and eschewed wanky dumbass solos because that is how he and Johnny Marr both played. It left a mark, in the most positive way possible.
The first chapter is entitled “The Things They Wouldn't Do” and perfectly captures the essence of a group who did it their way or no way at all, including walking away at the peak of fame and never looking back as a way to both preserve their friendships AND not slide into the trap of making music for cash that was a notch below their very best. And their very best is, to be clear, among the best music made by any pop artist at any time.
Nov 27, 2024
