BLVR: I’ve heard you guys had a no-analyzing rule for a while. You wouldn’t talk to each other about how the show went. TA: That was for about a year. You come offstage and no one can say anything. At all. At all. Because everyone’s got their own perspective. BLVR: Someone might think it’s a […]
music
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Weezer's 'Blue Album,' Twenty Years Later
He was cute; he was vulnerable; he had glasses. Really cool glasses. His hair was unfortunate; his features were delicate; in his videos, he could never quite hold eye contact with the camera. He wore sweaters a lot, and he sang about wearing the sweaters; he was a sweater-wearing dude, that Rivers Cuomo. He sang […]
Posted inPodcasts, Quotes
Jazz's Influence on the Beat Generation
These principal writers in various ways all tried to capture something of the flavor of jazz. Certainly Ginsberg and Kerouac. Kerouac wanted to write lines of prose or poetry that captured something of, say, the saxophonist art. He was interested in extemporization; he was interested in improvisation. And when he heard figures like Lester Young, […]
Posted inQuotes
On White Hip-Hop Artists Performing for White Audiences
In 2013, for the first time in the 55-year-history of the Billboard Hot 100, not one black artist lodged a number-one single. (Of the eleven songs that held the spot for some portion of the year, four were hip-hop, and four featured black singers or rappers in guest roles.) There’s been round, sustained clamor over Macklemore’s […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Beatles' Early Failures in America
Transglobal licensed “She Loves You” to a tiny indie, Swan Records of Philadelphia, which released it stateside on Sept. 16. Swan had even less success with the Beatles than Vee-Jay: The song failed to chart at any station, and was roundly rejected by audiences when it was played at all. DJ Murray the K at […]
Posted inPodcasts, Quotes
The Business of Merchandising Pop Music
Brian Epstein was the manager of a family-owned business called North End Music Stores in Liverpool, England. He began hearing a lot about a new group called The Beatles, who were playing at the Cavern Club. So he went to hear them, and one day, proposed a management contract. The four lads, which included drummer […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Creativity, and How to Start Over
MCQUEEN: Talk to me a little bit about Yeezus. The album before that one, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, was a phenomenal success. Did that wear on your mind when you went in to makeYeezus? WEST: Yeah! So I just had to throw it all in the trash. I had to not follow any of the rules […]
Posted inMember Pick, Nonfiction
Protected: Longreads Member Pick: The Gutbucket King, by Barry Yeoman
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Posted inBest of 2013, Nonfiction
Longreads Best of 2013: Best Listicle By Another Name
A Pianist’s A-V Alfred Brendel | New York Review of Books | July 2013 | 17 minutes (4,233 words) *** Robert Cottrell is editor of The Browser. The best writers about classical music are professional musicians: think of Jeremy Denk, Stephen Hough, Nico Muhly. (The exception that disproves the rule is Alex Ross.) Charles Rosen, […]
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2013: Best Listicle By Another Name
A Pianist’s A-V Alfred Brendel | New York Review of Books | July 2013 | 17 minutes (4,233 words) Robert Cottrell is editor of The Browser. The best writers about classical music are professional musicians: think of Jeremy Denk, Stephen Hough, Nico Muhly. (The exception that disproves the rule is Alex Ross.) Charles Rosen, whose […]