The Spine
I am bothered by the very uneven responses to the latest Giants album. Their stuff made me really care about music, and I've picked up every release b/c every one, so far, has had songs that have made me giddy & happy to have ears, and for all that I'll be the first to admit that the best time to really enjoy a TMBG song is when you're a young and angsty (but not terribly messed up) adolescent. Rock'n'roll w/ all the smarts & all the hooks and none of the posseur nihilism. Happy-sounding songs that are clever and way dark--but clever in their darkness.
In other news: I'm preparing to teach creative writing in the fall and setting up a messy blog to list short stories to include in the reading list. Feel free to contribute any ideas. I'm trying to find stories that are a) not sucky, b) not overly polite (though i am a fan of those introspective-small-domestic-drama-Chekovian-end-w/-a-weather-description stories, but students seem to get many of those, and not enough of other, weirder strains of fiction), c) the other, the weird, the wonderful, the very funny or the very sad or both.
I am bothered by the very uneven responses to the latest Giants album. Their stuff made me really care about music, and I've picked up every release b/c every one, so far, has had songs that have made me giddy & happy to have ears, and for all that I'll be the first to admit that the best time to really enjoy a TMBG song is when you're a young and angsty (but not terribly messed up) adolescent. Rock'n'roll w/ all the smarts & all the hooks and none of the posseur nihilism. Happy-sounding songs that are clever and way dark--but clever in their darkness.
In other news: I'm preparing to teach creative writing in the fall and setting up a messy blog to list short stories to include in the reading list. Feel free to contribute any ideas. I'm trying to find stories that are a) not sucky, b) not overly polite (though i am a fan of those introspective-small-domestic-drama-Chekovian-end-w/-a-weather-description stories, but students seem to get many of those, and not enough of other, weirder strains of fiction), c) the other, the weird, the wonderful, the very funny or the very sad or both.