There seems to be very little consensus on exactly where Rock crossed the line and became Post-Rock (a term popularized by Simon Reynolds), but most people agree that the two bands that galvanized the movement in the last two decades are Tortoise and Mogwai. The roots of the genre run deep and in many directions (e.g., Prog, Brian Eno, Jazz, CAN, PiL, Industrial, Jim O’Rourke, et al.), but for our purposes, we’ll start roughly with those two. Read more

One of the main ways I’ve gotten into music since I first started buying and listening some thirty years ago is through friends. I’ve made many friends because if a mutual interest in music, and I’ve gotten into many bands and artists because of my friends. Read more

V. Vale sent this out in his most recent newsletter (thanks, Vale). It’s a mini-documentary of a six-second drum break from the B-side of a Winstons’ record, a track called “Amen Brother,” that’s been sampled, looped, and reapproriated — by everyone from N.W.A. to car manufacturers — since its release in 1969. This is Nate Harrison’s meditation on that break, the “Amen Break.” It is “Amazing Grace” to his Bill Moyers, and this is a deep monologue on the ownership of cultural artifacts, the legality of sampling, and this six seconds of recorded history. Read more

Amy Cohen’s memoir, The Late Bloomer’s Revolution (Hyperion, 2007) is chock full of tales of woe and hilarity — losing a great job, a bad break-up, a bad face rash, bad dates, a dying mother, a distant father, worse dates, and the feeling of constantly having to prove that you’re okay, even though you don’t have what everyone else your age does. But Amy’s such a beautiful, funny, smart, young woman, it’s difficult to believe she didn’t make it all up. Read more

My friend Mark Lewman sent me this video clip a few years ago. It’s sort of a video zine called “UNCONSUB” that he made with a digital camera. At the time, one couldn’t share such things as freely as we do now (he sent it to me on a CDR via the regular mail), but now that we have the bandwidth, I thought I’d share it. Read more