Why It Matters

Dear Apple: Your Stores Suck

To enter an Apple store is to descend into a chipper circle of Hell.
From the Stacks: The Clash – ’16 Tracks’

Back in ’79, the benefit concert was still a pretty big thing.
Three Times I Wrote About Prince

Prince pops up a lot in my personal soundtrack. The same is true for any of you who are [mumble mumble] years old.
Throw Beck Thursday: The Best Prince Songs You Didn’t Know Were Prince

(This list dates from sometime in 2015. I’d much rather repost it under more pleasant circumstances, but what can you do.)
Deep Cuts: Songs To Be Lost To

Creative work is often about being lost.
A Brief Update On Not Writing WIM

I’m having a hard time settling into a post-WIM project.
From the Stacks: Smiths Bootlegs

Oh, Smiths, how I do love you.
Throw Beck Thursday: James Goes New Wave

Foreigner is one of those tragic victims of the Keyboard Eighties. Why so many Sixties and Seventies survivors felt the need to change what worked for them escapes me. I blame some sort of mass hysteria. It’s the only logical explanation for how “Superstition” and “I Just Called To Say I Love You” could emanate…
Deep Cuts: Bathroom Songs

Bathrooms: Everybody needs ’em, what’s the big deal?
On Diffuser: 33 Years Ago: R.E.M. Release Their Subversive and Immersive Debut, ‘Murmur’

R.E.M.’s debut album is one of my desert island discs, so getting to celebrate it’s 33rd birthday was a nice treat.