Inside my skull, Kylie Minogue is Exhibit A for how the pleasures of pop music can be contextual. If I had spent the last twenty years living in London or Sydney, I would have heard Kylie’s countless singles on the radio, seen her tweak her image in dozens of videos, and read lots of glossy […]
posted 22 July 2008 in 1988. 5 comments
I was delighted to hear Snoop Dogg’s country-rock track “My Medicine” getting played on our local alternative-rock radio station; it was one of the oddball standouts of his latest album, Ego Trippin’–which I reviewed a few months back for Rolling Stone. I originally had cooked up a much longer version of the Sonny and Cher […]
Two more pictures from my May trip to the California desert and the Joshua Tree National Park, one involving a crow leaving its perch on a pickup truck: The other picture is probably my favorite from the trip:
posted 18 July 2008 in Photos. no comments yet
Back from the commercial break, we are joined again by Kevin Seal, wearing a black jacket over a black t-shirt. “This is the top funky one hundred of 1988,” he says, and then hypes the “Big Bang ’89” New Year’s Eve event later that night on MTV: “We’ll count down the minutes to midnight, in […]
posted 17 July 2008 in 1988. 2 comments
Flipping through radio stations in the car yesterday, I heard Gavin Rossdale’s solo single, “Love Remains the Same,” which has not been a monster hit, but evidently is getting some airplay. In the ’90s, I wrote about Gavin (and his band Bush) often enough that Gavin and I called each other “my namesake.” This article […]
“Time to visit the Duke,” former Sex Pistol Steve Jones often says on his (excellent) Los Angeles radio show when heading into a commercial break. I had been listening for months before any guest asked him what “the Duke” meant; I had assumed it was a euphemism for the bathroom, but it turns out Jones […]
posted 15 July 2008 in 1988. 6 comments
One of my favorite albums this year is Portishead’s third studio album, creatively titled Third. It’s been over a decade since Portishead’s last studio album (the equally creatively titled Portishead), but as far as I can tell from their recent press clippings, they haven’t changed a bit. (Their music certainly hasn’t: they still make exquisite […]
posted 14 July 2008 in Archives, Articles. 3 comments
I’ve added flipwalk #31 to the 48 Hours from Ground Zero section. A teaser image: A tip of the hat to artist Julian Opie, who’s done some of my favorite public artworks of the past few years. I’m also pleased (and a little surprised) to say that I’ve found my missing notes, and have accordingly […]
posted 11 July 2008 in Photos. no comments yet
Very little happens in this video. But then again, very little needs to. Somebody clearly made the calculation that having George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison in one room would provide enough entertainment value by itself, and they were right. Twenty years later, the appeal of the Traveling Wilburys and […]
posted 10 July 2008 in 1988. 7 comments
John (Cougar) Mellencamp has a new album out next week, called Life Death Love and Freedom (a title in the tradition of the BoDeans’ Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams and the Godfathers’ Birth, School, Work, Death). So the latest addition to the archives is a profile I wrote of him back in 2004, […]
posted 9 July 2008 in Archives, Articles. 4 comments
