whey we don’t hear the city in Siouxsie and the Banshees
Currently I’m revising and expanding an essay I posted here a year ago, about how Joy Division came to sound like Manchester, to present at the 2012 EMP Pop Conference next month. The artistic connection between Joy Division and their city of origin is clear and powerful for many listeners, but my argument is that the connection isn’t...
punk-rock dads in suburbia: reflections on “The Other F Word”
I’m still thinking about “The Other F Word,” Andrea Nevins’ new documentary about punk rock musicians who became fathers, since I saw it a week and a half ago at the Woodstock Film Festival. Featuring the dads who play in Pennywise, NOFX, Blink 182, Rancid, Bad Religion, Black Flag, Rise Against, U.S. Bombs, and Fear (represented by...
don’t cross a Scottish new romantic
I’ve always loved Ultravox since I first heard “Vienna” in the early 1980s. However, my musical education from the New Musical Express (which, as I mentioned before, kind of fucked me up) quickly impressed upon me that Ultravox were actually fey pompous bourgeois muso popstars. (Just earning three of those five modifiers would ensure a critical death...