I guess in the name of full disclosure I should start off by mentioning that I am a former resident of New Orleans. I moved there in the late ’80s — a wayward twenty-something searching for new beginnings, trying to make sense of myself and the world. To say the “Big Easy” was [...]

I’ve wanted to write seriously about Chesnutt for years. I hoped one day to do a long interview with him for Verbicide. I figured that now that I was back in Georgia the opportunities to talk to his friends and family might present themselves and I could do an even longer piece. Why not? Even with his personal life in turmoil, his career was on an extraordinary trajectory.

Lou Reed once asked, “What becomes a legend most?” No doubt the unfailingly modest Lou Barlow would blanch at being called a “legend.” And yet when you take the long-view, few artists have been as prolific, productive, and influential over the last 20 years. Barlow burst onto the scene as the bass-player in the seminal [...]

It was around 3 a.m. when the rain started. At first it was just a fine mist beading up on the cracked windshield. But by the time we hit I-77 in deepest, darkest part of West Virginia it was coming down in steady black sheets. There was an ill-wind blowing and our little car, weighed down with life’s possessions, swayed ominously with each gust.

In 2000, I hooked up with a merry band of anarchists and hitched a ride to DC for the IMF/World Bank protests. I was living outside of Boston at the time. We had left around midnight, and sometime around 4:30 a.m. we pulled into a rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike. I was shocked [...]

Originally published in Verbicide issue #25
In the fall of 1979 I was an angst-ridden college freshman struggling to find a place in a university culture that felt truly alien to me. I was experiencing the usual growing pains — I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I sure as hell wasn’t [...]

Originally published in Verbicide issue #24
Winter 1984. I’d been living in the Washington, DC area for about five months. To be specific, I was living in a shitty little apartment down the street from the Dischord House in Arlington, Virginia. It’s hard for me to describe how excited I was to finally be in the [...]

Originally published in Verbicide issue #23
The phone rang at 5:30 in the morning and unfortunately I was already awake to answer it. In fact, I’d been more or less conscious for 72 hours, riding out the effects of a Human Growth Hormone/Viagra cocktail. Hey, I’ll try anything twice. I couldn’t find my pants. There appeared [...]

I dreamt I saw Al Gore last night. And in my dream Al Gore was wearing his Nobel Prize medal and it was magic. It gave him the power of flight. Yes, Al Gore could fly in my dream and he was flying around the world saving the human race from itself. He smote the evil SUVs, and when the people were confused he showed them his PowerPoint and they were satisfied.

“Dylanology” has become quite an industry over the decades. You can fill a library with the books that have been written about the guy, and there are academic conferences dedicated to interpreting his work and significance. A couple of the more interesting documentaries made in the past 50 years look at various periods of his [...]

If you could put together a fantasy league band the same way you can a baseball team, who would you choose bring the noise? In a sense, that was the question confronting poet/vocalist/saxophonist Dan McGuire when he floated the idea for Unknown Instructors to his friend, the eternally-touring Mike Watt. McGuire wanted to combine his [...]

This CD might properly be termed “epic.” Three discs. Four hours of Jello Biafra’s political rants. If JB was a left-wing Energizer bunny, this would be his CD. He just keeps going and going and going. No doubt it is an acquired taste, but one that’s worthwhile if you’re up for it. Jello tee’s off [...]

Originally published in Verbicide issue #20
Back in the 1970s, there used to be this notorious nightclub in my hometown of Lancaster, Ohio. It was called Siggy’s and the local Puritans were always up in arms over the goings-on there — usually because they were pissed that someone might actually be having a good time. In [...]

Originally published in Verbicide issue #19
So, music geeks, how many conversations have you started with the statement, “I was into those guys back when they were good?” It is an exclamation that has been fodder for many exuberant debates and more than a few fistfights. And, in general, it’s usually just so much bullshit. It [...]

I raved about these guys’ self-titled release on A-F awhile back and this is just more of the same. Great old-school hardcore that riffs all over bands like Dag Nasty, Minor Threat, and Government Issue. And they’re political as hell to boot! What’s not to rave about? In another context, I’d get a little pissy [...]