Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

I've always listened to audio late at night. As a kid, I would flip the dial of my tiny boombox  and listen to whatever weird audio oddities I could find. I was never content with listening to the average music that saturated the FM bands, so I often would switch over to the AM dial to find suitable alternatives. I have written before about playing pool and listening to the radio while always searching for something interesting. Other times I would record myself talking or intersperse my dialogue with snippets from the radio and television and listen to them over and over again. I particularly loved recording dialogue from old television shows on Nick At Nite. Sometimes I even recorded full episodes and listened to them. It's sad that I never found that many old time radio shows. My great aunt Alice had a ham radio, and I remember loving when she would go on and find people from other countries and places talking. I knew nothing about numbers stations at that time, but I re...

There is an age-old mixtape code that does not allow for much recopying. The tape you make for one person should not be given to another. This does not stop these tapes from being recopied if they are good, usually by the receiver of said tape without the knowledge of the author, carrying on the tradition of musical choices and adding more variety to one's musical taste. Tapes can throw a monkey wrench into the works and introduce an interesting theme that needs to be carried on, or a genre that has not been explored. One of these types of thematic tapes turned me on to power pop, and more recently music blogs have taken over some of the work of mixtapes, introducing me to older rock and country stuff that I would have missed.             Mixtape etiquette also assumes that the tape will be a labor of love. Now mixed CDs or playlists do not have to be listened to as they are made. Those old mixtapes required that the creator w...

29. Ryan Bingham - Tomorrowland Bingham is a survivor. He has released several great records of rootsy rock 'n' roll, while walking a tightrope between immense popularity and guarded obscurity. His worn vocals have been compared to everyone from Tom Waits to Steve Earle; they are referred to far too often as whiskey-soaked. Yet they are an acquired taste. He garnered tons of acclaim for "The Weary Kind," from The Crazy Heart soundtrack, yet retreated to his own label for Tomorrowland . In many cases, Bingham would be seen as a country outsider, more akin to the outlaw songwriting camp of Billie Joe Shaver than that of Waylon Jennings. Tomorrowland maps this divide. Ever the iconoclast, Bingham does what he wants, whether he falls into a comfortable groove or rocks harder than Nashville has seen in years. The record isn't as big on production, nor is it as rock 'n' roll as his earlier ones, but Bingham has created an honest, heartfelt a...