Pop punk (AKA Hot Topic Punk) is a “genre” largely championed by radio consultants and suburbanites waiting to inherit daddy’s business.

New radio format just dropped.

Nehls: I would like to quickly address the police officers from January 6th. And I can tell you that the fault does not lie with Donald Trump. It lies with the US capitol leadership team. Fanone: *Coughs: Go fuck yourself*

Now more than ever, we could use the cosmic ontology (and skepticism and wit) of Robert Anton Wilson. Sidebar: Ninja Tune! Was it really 31 years ago I was spinning NJ joints in Boulder? 🕰️

Oblique Strategy of the Day… #BrianEno #PeterSchmidtOblique Strategy of the Day… Where's the edge? Where does the frame start?

Five shows I’ve seen with women singing lead: Concrete Blonde Nanci Griffith Meshell Ndegeocello Debbie Harry & Jazz Passengers Koko Taylor

Introduce yourself with five concerts you’ve seen: Shane MacGowan Suzanne Ciani (in quadraphonic!) John Zorn’s Masada (@ Knitting Factory) Grateful Dead Morton Subotnick

Gary Larson: In my cartoon I invented Cow Tools as a cautionary tale Cows: At long last, we have created the Cow Tools from classic newspaper comic Cow Tools

Colorado-based NORAD issues this warning that aircraft are headed for Greenland for a planned exercise, lest anyone mistake it for an American invasion of a NATO ally

RIP Ralph Towner. I discovered him as a late-teen, finding his albums with Oregon and with Jan Garbarek & Eberhard Weber at my local library. One eulogy I read today called Towner “quietly radical.” He was a phenomenal guitarist and a key part of the ECM label sound. Nightcap:

Oh, the memories this evokes just seeing the cover art.

Average Sunday show interview: OFFICIAL: we are going to dip enemies of the state into acid vats HOST: how will you pay for it? OFFICIAL: tariffs HOST: critics say tariffs don't generate acid vat money OFFICIAL: tariffs have generated more money than has ever existed HOST: thank u for ur time

RIP Ralph Towner slippedisc.com/2026/01/ralp...

The latest annual Oxford America Music Issue reminded me all over again of the genius of Blaze Foley.

BREAKING: This dog is named Susan From Accounting

Greil Marcus has long been an astute observer of American music and culture. He coined the term ‘The Old, Weird America’ and described it as a “playground of God, Satan, tricksters, Puritans, confidence men, Illuminati, braggarts, preachers, anonymous poets of all stripes.”

62 years ago today On January 16, 1964 a small club on the Sunset Strip opened its doors for the first time. It was The Whisky a Go Go, the first ever live music venue to be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and the most iconic club of the Strip. This picture was taken in August 1980

"Before long, you realise the music isn’t so much “freeform” as creating its own forms, pulling them apart and recombining them in real time. The music can have melodies and grooves, but it takes them places. It can be cacophonous, but it can also be meditative, eerie, absurd, and beautiful."

LA Times sums up the state of our government: federal Nazi propaganda. www.latimes.com/politics/new...

Playlisting a little radio show and things bubble up.

So, if I'm following all this correctly, a bunch of internet shitposters who spent years screaming "don't tread on me" and warning about federal agents stomping out people's rights... have been hired as ICE agents to go around breaking into people's homes, kidnapping & shooting them

In April 2024, Spotify implemented a new scheme: songs with less than 1k streams per year would no longer receive royalties. The data for 2025 was just released via Luminate, and 88% of songs have been demonetized. Read it again: 88% of songs on Spotify have been demonetized.

ICE is holding Native Americans hostage as a bargaining chip to raid reservations, saying they won't release them until the tribes give up sovereignty. www.startribune.com/ice-detainin...

This is why we celebrate the Boston Substack Party, when the patriots wrote strongly worded pamphlets about tea.

Saint Paul schools will be closed Tuesday and Wednesday to prepare for optional online learning. I’ve seen schools close for snow, for pandemic, for natural disaster. I’ve never seen schools close because of threat from our own government.

RT if you've never had a tab of ChatGPT open 'just to do quick research'

“Art is a sense of magic.” -Stan Brakhage #BOTD

We’re articulating our approach to generative AI so musicians can keep making music and fans can trust the music they find on Bandcamp.

Bandcamp Bans Music Substantially or Wholly Generated by AI Source: Bandcamp. Our guidelines for generative AI in music and audio are as follows: Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp. Any use of AI tools to impersonate other artists or…

Oh nothing. Just People magazine all up in here doing better protest coverage than the Kings & Queens of Comfort that make up NPR and other mainstream media.

“I used to be an atheist, until I realized I had nothing to shout during blowjobs. Oh Random Chance! Oh Random Chance! just doesn't cut it….” ~ RAW

To the late, great Bobby Weir RIP 😞 youtu.be/1aCQcF6fatw

Ah fuck 😢

Looks like ICE is now cracking down on … Native Americans. This letter was just posted by the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North/South Dakota: “Our Nation is a sovereign government and our members are not immigrants. We are not subject to immigration enforcement on our own lands.”

“Let’s have another wealthy geriatric donor wine reception!” 🙄

New: we've obtained material explaining how an ICE surveillance system, called Webloc, works. Draw shape on a map, see all phones available there, follow them home. All without warrant “This is a very dangerous tool in the hands of an out-of-control agency.” www.404media.co/inside-ices-...

Is 2026 never going to end?

Today marks 15 years since a gunman tried to assassinate me. He shot 19 people and killed six. I almost died, and think of those who did every day.

Fifteen years… I was part of the reporting team on that horrific day, and took that photograph (with permission from the boy’s mother) at a vigil. I’d also interviewed Rep. Giffords just days before. We sprang into action to report the news. The emotional fallout followed a few days later…

we fought, and I'm not kidding you can look it up, a whole revolution to stop shit like this

Okay, this was just what I needed to close out a hellscape of a day. A glimpse into a bygone genre of entertainment: The variety show. It’s also a reminder that Glen Campbell was enormously talented. Plus the politely earnest applause from the audience of committed squares is pretty amusing!

Make it viral.

The woman killed by ICE today was a poet. She won the 2020 Academy of American Poets, University & College Poetry Prize at Old Dominion University. (And this is Renee from confirmed socials- a photo of a different woman with red lipstick is going around, but that was a classmate.) /

Ongaku Sessions is a program for concentrated listening, featuring two sets of music linked by a common thread, such as era, genre, topic. Ongaku (音楽) = "sound" in Japanese. Ongaku Sessions is inspired by kissa, the cafes and bars in Japan that play records and invite patrons to listen intently.

Music is refuge from the shitstorm of politics and bad news. Ep012 of my radio show Ongaku Sessions is out now. It’s cinematic and slightly blurry, like an out of focus camera. Hear Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Harold Budd & Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, O Yuki Conjugate, and more. Listen at boxofvisions.com.

Worth noting that Minnesota Public Radio is NOT doing that. They're interviewing people on the ground, chasing down witnesses and facts, and treating ICE statements with the appropriate amount of skepticism.

I work in public radio and can NOT listen to NPR anymore. It’s a matter of mental health. I will not tolerate their endless Trump obsession and rank stenography. Support your local public radio stations. One good, underpaid local reporter is a worth a million corporate Steve Inskeeps.

one of the things i hate most about this persistent line of argument is the implication that any of these actions would be fine if groceries were cheaper