Bitch took over Penn to crush dissent

A pop phenomenon I can’t get enough of is when a musical artist who has made their bones being snarky or flip just goes all in on an earnest love song and it’s like an admission that they’ve been a real dick up till now but promise to do better

Black-Jewish relations taking one more lap around the track

Well, damn. Summer in the rear view. At least we still have Chumped to sing all our disappointments of the season to that great riff: “I’m looking at you! You’re looking through me! I would wait for you all summer!”https://youtu.be/3PfvWaRZcPU

Sonny Curtis died. He’s most known for being a Cricket and for writing I Fought the Law. But I admire him most for writing this and making it possible for the Huskers to be funny at least this once youtu.be/zFyy3XB_3Y4

Don't Mess with the Dragon youtu.be/ZU41stQlaIE

Here’s mine. Not quite done yet, because I want it to be a full 24 hours long. But getting there. open.spotify.com/playlist/2k1...

Not sure if it's gonna turn out to get me charged with premature antifascism but yeah, I just went ahead and got the jab(s).

The way people line up for mediocre bagels here in this city makes me purse my lips and shake my head very Jewishly

I’m always more interested in FOAT (favorite of all time) lists than GOAT ones. Canon-building is for institutions and corporations. Desire is for us.

The amount of corruption, cruelty and collaborationism that marks our moment is too much to process in any healthy way so I’m just gonna focus on never letting Zionist Jews in the US forget the part they played in the worst genocide of our era.

I think it’s really culturally and politically important to try to imagine the subjectivity of the Other, but sorry: just can’t imagine being cool as Link Wray

After literally years of ignoring me, my friend’s cat has, apparently, decided that things are bad enough that he is ready to make alliance with me

Going through the pile of mail in my office and there was a beautiful book—a graphic history of Peter Laughner and Cleveland’s early punk scene and a card from the author saying hey and it really made my week

Just stumbled upon the Platonic ideal of garage rock—four very intense young women in Chicago raging against the dying of the light (curfew!) in 1966. They were called Daughters of Eve (of course). The song is called Hey Lover and it is made of true love and understanding.

Trying to figure out how to commemorate the retirement of a guy from my workplace who once used the word “Jew” as a verb to me

About to teach my long Friday afternoon class and it hits me I am likely the last thing standing in between my students and their weekend. Puts pressure on my choice of walk-in music but I'm thinking freddy getting ready to do the rock steady. youtu.be/1LAPthwq78E

Morning!

I so love @emmaswiftsings.bsky.social ‘s voice! And you’re totally right—gorgeous is exactly the word for her new album.

Nah Bernie, too late: the Subaru with your bumpersticker on it has driven off. Locally. But also world historically.

Walked into the venue tonight and bumped right into a great former grad student who said “I wondered if you’d be here tonight” snd honestly that’s just how I want to be greeted when I walk in the club

I think this will make me happy

I don’t know about you but if one of my kids texted the word “lingering” it would be clear evidence they had been kidnapped

I should probably hush (lol, right) but I gotta say: Emma Swift’s new LP is the most gorgeous thing I’ve heard in forever. Like Dusty in Memphis level. It’s her post-“nervous breakdown” record (her words) and the record writes its own review: “Desperate times call for desperate pleasures.”

Not saying they look alike but they sure do *look* alike

The Delines keep knocking me out: above all it is the singing of Amy Boone. She is one of the great empathic working-class singers of our time. She always inhabits the songs with care, communicating just how these characters are making their own misery, but not as they please. New record is great.

I’ve always been a bit agnostic about James McMurtry but his new one is a dark masterpiece. One of my favorites goes “I can’t stand getting old: it don’t fit me.” The very best one is called “Sons of the Second Sons.”?

OK it looks (no jinx) like I have sold this vehicle. But it didn't stop being weird. The very sweet guy who bought it FLEW HERE to Boston from Iowa. For my 2009 Outback wagon. I asked him if at least he flew direct and he said "Brother. There is nowhere I can fly direct from where I live."

Whenever I'm feeling a little haggard on a Monday, I just head over to C*n*ry Mission, where those genocidaires always keep me young.

Normalize saying ethnonationalist

‘Down in the Bowery' is a song I wrote for my son who is 18 and an angry young man…I love my son very much. [He's a] graffiti artist, a drummer and singer…I'm very proud of him. The song…encourages him to be who he wants to be… I will always have his back Alejandro Escovedo

"Critics are raving about THE MELNICK JOB, a surprise hit at this year's Cannes Festival. 'No big studio would have dared to tell this story; stunning' (Siskel and Ebert). 'Casey Affleck was born to play this role' (Rolling Stone). 'Trump continues to challenge political norms' (New York Times)."

Ok here’s the cool little punk band I saw open for Superchunk the other night. TeeVee Repairmann is the name, I may be older than their combined ages. Totally life affirming.

Share your favorite covers as a timeline cleanse? (Also one of the best video files on the entire internet.)

Sorta postscript which I’m too superstitious to spell out until the payment clears but I seem to have sold the car (again) under somewhat strange circumstances

A mystery!!

Heart hurting with the news that David Johnston--a great musician and local fixture--has passed. I knew Dave mostly as a sweet, genuine guy communing with the birds at Alewife Reservation. But he was a serious musician--jazz and funk guitar, a song recorded by Peter Wolf. Sigh.

Heart hurting with the news that David Johnston--a great musician and local fixture--has passed. I knew Dave mostly as a sweet, genuine guy communing with the birds at Alewife Reservation. But he was a serious musician--jazz and funk guitar, a song recorded by Peter Wolf. Sigh.

Just went from the brand new Liquid Mike record which is pure adrenaline goodness to GZA’s Liquid Swords which is 30 years old and sounds brand new too. Music! It doesn’t give a shit about time!

A little story: about a month ago this guy responded to my FB ad, said he wanted to buy my car. Didn't want to negotiate just wanted to put an offer on the table and I should let him know if I wanted to take it. I wanted to take it! So we made a plan for him to come by. 1/

Cue Mario Savio on the machine getting too odious

I’m in this picture, and I like it

Guy says he is on his way here to buy my old Subaru wagon and if this goes through (no jinx!) I'm gonna tell you all a funny story about the last guy who said he was buying it. Film-worthy. In a low-rent Affleck/Damon kind of way.

As a scholar who has studied rumors in a few contexts, I'm trying to clock the emerging lore around our campus chaos at UMB on Thursday: best I can come up with is that someone found a doll at the Kennedy Library next door? And it had writing on it that said it was poison?

This afternoon I taught Christopher Small’s essay on musicking—the simple but profound proposition that music is a verb and presents a utopian model of how the world could be—and then I went out and did it a little and I guess that’s praxis?

Something cathartic about being in a crowd singing No Hope. Because we know we don’t mean it.

Superchunk covering Magnetic Fields and reminding the crowd that they started in Boston

Among other things, Superchunk played my favorite rock song of the century: Crossed Wires.

More soon but this Superchunk show was not just rock and roll ecstasy for me, but also some real inside baseball: Mac name-checked Boston legend Billy Ruane and Fort Apache Studios—half a mile from the venue, and subjects I spent much of my summer writing about.