After combing alleys and streets all over the goddamn neighborhood for an hour and a half, I turn the corner onto our block and see the little bastard pumping his pork chop legs, the fire engine’s plastic parts, faded pink by the sun, rattling all around him to the rhythm of the sidewalk. I pull […]
Issue 72
Nat Bennett: Not By The Moon
Gambling that a midnight serenade will soften his wife’s memory of finding him naked in the pool with their daughter’s nanny, my brother Tom insists I accompany him rhythmically. When I protest that I don’t own any drums he says, “Well, then get one of your beatnik buddies to loan you a goddamn bongo. I […]
Nat Bennett: All That Dysentery
The first time my father brought the woman who would soon become our stepmother along to our weekly Thursday night dinner I was up all night hugging my mother’s toilet bowl, my aching head swaying above the water, then writhing each time the contents of my stomach scurried out of me, as if my body, […]
Poet Maudit: Conversation with Chris Whitley at Caffé Vivaldi, NYC: July 20, 2004
Texas-born, Dresden-based singer-songwriter Chris Whitley is oddly hot. A doe-eyed late Chet Baker in a wife beater, Whitley’s music is a seductive amalgam of atmospheric alternative rock, funk, and blues. With a devoted fan base and the occasional deal with Columbia, or Messenger records, or Dave Matthews’ imprint, ATO Records, Whitley works the border, the […]
Russell Carmony: William Hung and Theater of the Absurd in America
In her essay collection Sea World Tales, Debra DiPaolo tells the story of an elderly communist man who travels to the U.S. to visit his son. Soon after his arrival, his son takes him to Sea World to watch the “Shamu the Killer Whale Show.” The show is a reenactment of George Washington crossing the […]
BJ Ward: Jimmy Vivino and Bruce Springsteen at Convention Hall, Asbury Park, NJ
They trade licks like compliments and the horns are scurrying to keep up, like one family scrambling to pay the suddenly-raised rent. Max catches on and tumbles a charging rhinoceros’s heartbeat into the mix. Everyone is seriously playing when Ed Manion’s fingers climb up the neck of his sax as if they were the four […]