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  • Deep Cuts: Your Edible Thanksgiving Playlist

    This week’s “Deep Cuts” is located over on Diffuser. It’s a good one, and it answers the question that’s been gnawing at you: Can I put together a playlist of songs representing a traditional Thanksgiving meal and write a homage to Trading Places at the same time? Yes. Yes I can. Happy Thanksgiving. —photo Kurt…

  • On Diffuser: The Roots of Indie: The Kashmere Stage Band

    Never heard of the Kashmere Stage Band? Oh, man, you’re missing out.

  • 197. When I’m Driving In My Car

    My glamorous job in the world of premium cable television consisted mostly of driving around Los Angeles.

  • On Diffuser: Pearl Jam’s ‘Vitalogy,’ 20 Years Later

    Twenty years? Really? For the love of Kurt’s cardigan, am I getting old.

  • On Diffuser: 5 Artists So Popular They’re Unpopular

    It’s an odd phenomenon: The more popular a band gets the less popular that band seems to be, like some kind of collective amnesia befell the people who bought their 100 million records. Here are five artists (six, really, with a few extras thrown in like garnish on a plate) loathed for being loved. Enjoy.

  • From The Stacks: KISS – Love Gun

    KISS’s sixth LP was the beginning of the end for the world’s biggest band. This was the last studio album recorded entirely by the original lineup, and the first featuring an Ace Frehley vocal.

  • On Grimy Goods: Annie Covers Cold War Kids

    Frequent Why It Matters contributor Anne-Marie Schiefer has a great piece up over on Grimy Goods about Cold War Kids. Go check it out.

  • Throw Beck Thursday: The Perils of Middle Aged Shoe Shopping

    All I wanted was shoes, not wearable traffic cones. — When it comes to buying clothes I couldn’t be more predictably male. I own five of the same shirt, for example, because it fits and it covers up my gorilla body. That’s all a shirt really needs to do. For 35 years from the waist…

  • On Diffuser: The Roots of Indie: ‘Nuggets, Volume 1’

    There aren’t a whole lot of essential compilation albums, but Lenny Kaye’s original Nuggets certainly qualifies. You can read my love letter to a two record set here.

  • Deep Cuts: Songs For New Beginnings

    The first day at any job is both exhilarating and stressful, even without almost killing Pee-Wee Herman. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? What are the alliances, and why is this guy Steve so protective about his yogurt? And then there are the new job duties, all the the new things…