normal service to resume

…as soon as we figure out what normal service is around here.

As of very shortly, I’m gonna be away from my computer for a week and a half or so (so if you send me an email I’m not going to be able to respond until I’m back, but don’t let that stop you).

The time-consuming project I was working on and hinting vaguely about was Rolling Stone’s “The Beatles: 100 Greatest Songs” special issue, which is out now. Since I always need to have something to hint vaguely about, I’ll say that I have an unrelated small but nifty piece of news, which I’d thought I’d be able to announce by now but actually won’t be public for a few more days yet. Tell you when I get back.

firecracker firecracker

Boom boom boom, as Half Japanese said. Hi. The fireworks are going off, there’s a singer/guitarist on the other side of the lake with a loud amplifier and a middling command of the Beatles catalogue, there’s the lingering scent of corn-on-the-cob in the air: it’s summer.

This coming Tuesday is a bit of an event for me: the release of Smooth Sounds: Various Artists Play the Future Hits of WCKR SPGT, one of the four times I can think of that a recording I performed on has been released by somebody else. WCKR SPGT wrote a whole bunch of songs specifically for their admirers to perform; I got one called “Kurt Cobain Will Have His Revenge on the City of Los Angeles,” which I arranged in a style I like to think of as “Ned’s Atomic Dustbin outtake.”

A few things I’ve written lately: on Jesse Reklaw’s Ten Thousand Things to Do, comics that should run forever, Alan Moore and Alan Davis’s D.R. and Quinch, what digital comics are worth, and supervillain comics, all over at Techland; on Konono No. 1, the Television Personalities, and Tender Trap, over at Pitchfork; on a bunch of recent graphic novels, for the New York Times Book Review.

And that’s not counting the project that occupied a lot of the last month, which should be surfacing sometime later this summer. Details when they’re public.

k.t. cruet

So this is springtime, and what have I done? April consisted of a lot of running around, mostly: Seattle, where I gave a talk and appeared on a panel at the Experience Music Project's Pop Conference (respectively on the future of the technology of listening to music and on indie music in the '00s); White River Junction, where I got to meet with students at the Center for Cartoon Studies; New York, where I appeared on a panel at the MoCCA festival; and Seattle again for a DJ gig, and remembering that I don't get to DJ nearly often enough. Mostly, I've been in Portland, where... I hung out with my family and sang a bit of karaoke.

Otherwise, the last couple of months have involved a lot of writing, of course: always writing. The 25th anniversary issue of SPIN had a piece I wrote about the relationship between '80s music zine culture and contemporary music blog culture (it's not online, as far as I can tell). Over at Salon, I wrote about the new gay character in Archie comics; at Time, I interviewed David Byrne about Here Lies Love; at eMusic, I wrote about the lost soul hits of the '60s and '70s; at Hilobrow, I wrote a brief appreciation of Agnetha Faltskög. For 48HR Magazine, or whatever the youngsters are calling it these days, I wrote about James Brown's uncomfortable intersections with the Hustle. I also wrote a ton of stuff at Techland, including an interview with Grant Morrison about his current Batman-related work. And I scratched my head about the very enjoyable "Exit Through the Gift Shop" at the NAJP's ARTicles blog.

April's Emanata columns at Techland included a guide to where to start with Love & Rockets, an appreciation of Brendan McCarthy's recent Marvel comics, a look at flash-forwards, a piece about sense-of-place in S.H.I.E.L.D. and Market Day, and an expression of irritation at the end of Blackest Night. May's were an essay on the relationship between the future of digital comics and the past of digital music, an assessment of Brian Michael Bendis's wrap-up of the last few years' Avengers titles, a guide for prospective Final Crisis readers, and--I was particularly happy about this one--eight questions for comics creators.

Next month, of course, I'm hoping to get some actual work done. I'm giving a lecture at the Portland Art Museum on the 13th; I've also got a massive assignment on an undisclosed subject that's due right around then, so I may be going into a hibernation-like state. I have no idea whether this means another extended absence from this blog or a frantic burst of activity. I'm hoping the latter. 

march, forth

Updates here continue to be infrequent and not-really-news-filled. That will change, for the better, sooner or later. But here’s my monthly what-I’ve-been-up-to check-in:

A New York Times Book Review piece on a handful of vintage-comic-strip reprint books

A bunch of columns and features at Techland, including pieces on Jason Shiga’s Meanwhile, on Punisher Max and Cry for Justice, on Siege and Krazy Kat, and on music in comics

A couple of features on eMusic: on the Chills’ Submarine Bells and on a bunch of Sub Pop albums

A few reviews at Pitchfork: the Nigeria Afrobeat Special compilation and the Kleenex/LiLiPUT live album

A quick review of Jules Feiffer’s memoir Backing Into Forward over at the Barnes & Noble Review

A pair of brief appreciations for Hilobrow: Lady Gaga and Rick Rubin’s Queen remixes

My first post at the NAJP’s blog ARTicles, on Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez’s outstanding Perfumes: The A-Z Guide

So: a reasonably productive month word-count-wise. Not as productive in other ways, maybe, but that’s what April will be for, right?

shaking like a willow or a daffodil

Things I’ve done in the past month:

*Reviewed the Canadian hardcore band Fucked Up’s Couple Tracks over at Pitchfork

*Wrote a couple of pieces over at Thought Catalog, on The Magnetic Fields’ Realism and Spider-Man’s search for a father substitute (and also covered a Magnetic Fields show for Vulture)

*Visited New York City and had a whole lot of meetings with people and saw Saffire, not the “uppity blues women” Saffire but the “awesome very young women who blew the roof off the Willie Mae Rock Camp benefit” Saffire

*Wrote a bunch of pieces for Techland, including an ongoing weekly column on comics that’s going by the name “Emanata”: on The Question #37, on DMZ, on DC’s new top dogs (plus an interview with them), on Kick-Ass, on the sources of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, and on Batman and Robin. And I wrote my first-ever piece in Time proper: a very, very short blurb on the excellent new Joanna Newsom album.

*Interviewed the great Kevin O’Neill at length over at The Comics Journal

*Saw Richard Thompson play a two-set show here in Portland that was being recorded for a live album: one set of unreleased new material, one of old faves—his songwriting’s in steep decline (I was kind of boggled that he wrote a song about Burning Man, and wondered if he’d actually been there), but his guitar playing is actually still getting even better; if there are 24-year-old guitarists who are even vaguely in his neighborhood I’d love to know about them

*Discovered that chatroulette is much, much more fun if you do it with a) friends and b) multiple singing puppets

I’ll keep up more if you keep up more, how’s about that?

a strong beat to step to

It’s hard to post something without spilling the beans when there are beans to be spilled. But the good news is that I’ve joined the team over at Time’s Techland blog—I’ll be writing about comics for them! My first piece for them just went up today: it’s on “Wizzywig” and “Footnotes in Gaza.”

Other recent links with my name attached to them: I wrote about Rakim for Hilobrow, Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary for Barnes & Noble, Siege for the Savage Critic, and a bunch of stuff for eMusic, like this piece on Loveless and its antecedents.

Also, I’ll be in this book, and maybe another one…!

At some point, I plan to develop an interior life, too. My new year’s resolution of drinking three glasses of wine a week (this represents a drastic increase, not a decrease) might help with that, I’m thinking.

out of the demo, into the fully functional licensed version

Happy birthday to me! So far I’ve been celebrating in the traditional way: vegetarian dim sum, karaoke, fruit salad, and being interviewed at length about The Invincible Iron Man by Tom Spurgeon. Can’t beat that. I am brewing up some interesting plans for the year and the decade, some of which will be made public before too long.

ten manifestations of culture that got me through the 2000s

For those of you who’ve asked for a list of some kind:

The iPhone

M.I.A./Diplo: Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1

Arrested Development

Alison Bechdel: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

The New Pornographers: Mass Romantic

Katamari Damacy

David B.: Epileptic

“The Beast”

Grant Morrison et al.: Seven Soldiers of Victory

Kelly Link: “Catskin” (in Magic for Beginners)

And now: ONWARD!!

same riff, no apostrophe

The most successful thing I’ve helped introduce into the kid’s life recently: a pair of Mollie Katzen cookbooks, “Pretend Soup” and “Salad People,” which are set up so that small children can do most of the cooking themselves and occasionally ask a grown-up to serve as their sous-chef. He made miso-almond dipping sauce (to go with raw vegetables) and popovers for dinner this weekend. They were delicious, and he was very proud of himself.

Otherwise: just luxuriating in the end-of-year slowdown, taking care of some tasks that have been waiting to get done for a while, slowly reading through the San Francisco Panorama, prepping a couple of projects that might go live in the new year, and listening to an enormous number of old instrumental soul hits for a secret project. The days are a little too short and dim to be merry and bright at the moment, but I’m working on it.

more activity updates

Over at the Significant Objects project, I’ve written a short-short story about a travel hair dryer. Go have a look! You can even bid to win the early-’80s-model Conair dryer itself on eBay!

Otherwise: I’ve been writing about comics a lot lately. I did a roundup of some good ones over at the New York Times Book Review last weekend, and picked some of my favorites of this year for the Barnes & Noble Review.

And I wrote the liner notes for the excellent Daptone Gold compilation of music from the Brooklyn soul collective Daptone!

Also, I apparently have a (tiny) record review (of the Annie album) in the San Francisco Panorama, although I haven’t seen it yet…