Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

Starting with Steve Shelley's basic drum fills before the brightly ringing guitars begin,  matching the drum beats, "Schizophrenia" from Sonic Youth's 1987 album Sister . builds in an orderly fashion that feels loose over Thurston Moore's vocals, slightly recalling the track "Bull in the Heather" from 1994's Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star.  Chiming guitars answer the drums and bass throughout the song's nearly five-minute running time. Sonic Youth became the masters of this droning guitar dialectic with their different guitar tunings (in this case, F#F#GGAA for Thurston and DDDAA for Lee Renaldo) that they used to build a style and sound that was nearly unique in the early 1980s but meshed well with similar guitar interplay by contemporary indie bands like Dinosaur Jr. and Built to Spill.  After the first vocal part, the song becomes more schizophrenic with squealing, harmonic guitar interplay and minimal cymbals. This continues through ...

Jonathan Goes Country is undoubtedly my favorite Jonathan Richman record as I return to it much more than the others, despite such classics as I, Jonathan and Back in Your Life,  having many amazing tracks. Of course, The Modern Lovers records are also filled with incendiary classics. Something about Jonathan Goes Country resonates more with me than most on a song-by-song album level. Almost all the tracks have a place in showing that Richman can make country records with the best of them. The album's composition adds to its cohesion: five covers that honor the country canon while adding Richman's inimitable spin and seven originals that fit right in. He reworks three ("The Neighbors," "You're the One for Me," and "Corner Store") from his earlier albums, although you would never know he didn't write them for the album.  The record has few lows and many highs, cohesively fitting Richman's sound and style into the country idiom while reta...

 X songs are always up to the challenge of combining various genres in surprising ways. Ostensibly a pop song, "Burning House of Love" channels much of what makes X great at creating songs in different genres that still sound like no one but X. Another love/breakup song that is building on the difficulties of Exene and John Doe's relationship with a propulsive hook and great guitar work from Billy Zoom. The band is road tested, and Doe's vocals transport the listener to the scene, while Exene's backups almost bring a gospel feel to the track. Gospel, rock and roll, and punk combine for the usual stew of excellence with meaningful lyrics.  Track This  is a recurring feature of Snobbin' that turns the music appreciation dial up and rips it off your stereo. It introduces a new track, allows readers to rediscover an underappreciated track, or just serves as a forum to discuss a track that falls into the ear candy category and should be listened to unabashedly for ...

I've really dropped off the map with this blog in recent years due to a few major life circumstances, including miscarriages and job loss. I figure I will record my journey in a series of blog posts, poems, and short essays as I attempt to navigate my issues and write more for the blog. I have been continually working on academic articles and chapters along with editing fiction and hopefully working on my own book proposals for an edited collection and for a possible music/film book. I always have so many ideas, but my follow-through has been lacking.  Here are my proposals and goals for 2024: 1. Rework my Green Day 33 1/3 proposal in hopes of publishing some of it. Perhaps, I might put it on the the blog like I did with my Drive-By-Truckers Southern Rock Opera attempt a few years ago. 2. Write and publish a CFP on my favorite television show of the past few years for a possible edited collection. 3. Finish the two chapters for edited collections that I am currently working on. 4....

  A stunning debut from a first-time director that still holds up. John Singleton's story about a young man coming of age amidst gang violence in South Central Los Angeles has aged better than many of the other New Black Cinema films because of well-developed characters (at least for the most part) and realistic relationships. The compassion and decorum the film displays reinforce strong performances by Lawrence Fishburne and Ice Cube. Despite the rapper's brief role, Cube brings fresh air to his performance as wise-cracking and dogged Doughboy. Fishburne steals most of the scenes he appears in as Tre's (Cuba Gooding Jr.) tough but fair father. The chilling scene where he manipulates the stress balls as his son goes for revenge still hits hard thirty years later. If its been a while since you have seen Boyz n the Hood , you should revisit it. While a product of its time, this stylish movie  remains one of the best of the 1990s so-called hood films and one of the most moving...

Critics often compare Rusty Cundieff's mockumentary to Rob Reiner's This is Spinal Tap , and while  comparisons are often warranted, they do the film an injustice. Fear of a Black Hat , although it borrows and adapts some of the jokes, stands on its own as an insightful commentary of hip-hop culture. The film's  callbacks and inside jokes  will make anyone familiar with hip-hip history laugh out loud. Many of the spoofs are accurate, but more importantly, they are funny.  Unlike other parodies such as CB4 (also 1993), the film spoofs more aspects of hip hop culture without relying on the gangster rap era. The parodies of different era's hip-hop stars are precise sendups of specific people and tropes. Direct references to these figures, particularly Salt-N-Pepa as Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme and M.C. Hammer as M.C. Slammer, call attention to the self-seriousness of the movement and its critical response. The group member's contentious rivalries with each o...

We've been living on aspirin and hope for far too long. A Mountain Goats song gone to seed with an assorted crew of wellwishers and television addicts. Are we trapped in a Santa Monica basement in 1989 or a London flat with Maggie blaring on the telly? No, we are just treading water as we wait for the next circus and the inevitable sea monkeys. Temperamental 90s reverts to the spasmodic 50s as fall sets in. Generational or seasonal shifts increase anxiety. The sad fall inversion aches in the metacarpals and palms of our fragile hands. Here's to another year of going through emotions. Excuse my mixed metaphors.  I'm foundering near the coast without medication or the appropriate adjectives.