I kind of feel like I’m getting an education in Triangle music history this year; back in the winter, I saw alt country pioneers the Backsliders for the first time, and even though Southern Culture on the Skids have been playing their surfabilly punk since 1983, their latest LP Zombified is the first time I’ve…
Category: rock and roll it
the first album i ever bought: r.e.m.’s green turns 25
The first album I bought for myself was R.E.M.’s Green. I bought it on cassette tape when I was 8 years old, with birthday money, after my friend Jeremy played “Stand” for me. It’s still one of my favorite records of all time, though I usually default to Automatic as my go-to R.E.M. record. Green is…
video: frank turner – ‘the way i tend to be’
Frank Turner is never going to play in North Carolina and I am going to die of wanting to see him live. Then I will revive myself and do something outrageous, like finally getting a passport and then buying a plane ticket to Glasgow so I can see him for the first time with Lis…
video: radiation city – ‘foreign bodies’
Who’s excited about the new Radiation City album? I think that would be me. Seriously, dreamy Phil Spektor wall of sound girl group indie synth garage pop, please, hit all my buttons at once, Radiation City. It is probably possible for me to love you just a tiny bit more than I already do. And…
video: shakey graves, wild child, marmalakes – “dead end street” (kinks cover)
Remember how I used to say needs more Kinks covers*? I still believe that, and this collaboration from Austin, Texas artists Shakey Graves, Wild Child, and Marmalakes meets my needs. Exceeds my needs. I still need more Kinks covers. Those three Austin rockers are all on tour together in June. No North Carolina date, to…
weary engine blues: the songs of jason molina
The news of Jason Molina’s death broke on my 33rd birthday; this is not new for me, a beloved musician dying as I age a year, since Alex Chilton passed away the night before my 30th birthday. Both left me grief-stricken, restless, unsure of myself and my life. For Chilton, I resolved it with the…
giveaway: mike tyler – money grows on your knees 7″
One of the reasons that I find New York noise-pop artist Mike Tyler so terrifically charming is that he talks about music like I write about it: not quite on center, maybe with some strange comparisons, some unique sentence structure, words that are as oddly off-center and delightful as his music. On the subject of…
brothers in arms: scott and grant hutchison (frightened rabbit)
This year, I decided to revive an old project that I’d conceived back in 2009, when I was first starting to get serious about the pursuit side of photography, rather than the taking photos side. I compiled a list of bands in which siblings, or siblings and relatives, played together, and decided to shoot casual…
perfection’s always flawed: a baseball mix
My all-time favorite photo of Matt Wieters, future of the Orioles organization, existed before the Big Bang, subject of all love songs ever written, bad ass new god. He hit a two-run homer in the first inning of the O’s first game today. This is a playlist of baseball songs. You should listen to it,…
festival preview / interview: phuzz phest
I have a lot of long-running jokes about Winston-Salem, and I have to be honest: most of them aren’t particularly nice. Most of them do involve the notion of time travel and how if we could harness the vortex of six thousand miles from nowhere that Winston seems to exist in, we could actually build…
brand new kind of photography 