Maybe it’s apt that I don’t remember, but I somehow came across Tom Phillips‘ “treated Victorian novel,” A Humument (Tetrad Press, 1970), nearly a decade ago at San Diego State University. Phillips took William Mallock’s A Human Document (Cassell Publishing, 1892) and obscured words on every page, leaving a few here and there to tell a new story. It’s part painting, part drawing, part collage, part poetic cut-up, and all weirdly, intriguingly unique (You can view full pages from the book at its website).
Phillips claims that he picked A Human …

During my brief stint in the Bay Area nearly fifteen years ago, I managed to go to 924 Gilman Street—the Left Coast’s answer to 315 Bowery—a few times with my friend Brian Peterson. I know one time we went to see our favorite math-rock masters, A Minor Forest, and another time was to see them do pre-…And Justice for All Metallica covers for the Metal Madness Show.

jan 31 sat: Metal Madness Show: East Bay bands doing metal
covers:
Creeping Death, Rocket Queens, American …

You know the story. On September 7, 1996, Tupac Shakur was shot as he waited at a traffic light in the passenger seat of Suge Knight’s car on the Las Vegas strip. He died on September 13. Six months later, on March 9, 1997, Christopher Wallace a.k.a. Biggie Smalls was gunned down in Los Angeles.[i] The two had been embroiled in a media-abetted, bi-coastal battle for Hip-hop supremacy, dividing the majority of the Hip-hop nation into two camps, East versus West.[ii]
On April 15, 2012, Tupac’s ghost performed to a packed …

Though the concept album has a history dating back to the 1940s, prog rock acts like Pink Floyd, Yes, and Rush are probably the first bands to come to mind. Just doing an album-length story connotes prog leanings, recall The Mars Volta‘s De-Loused in the Comatorium (GSL, 2003) and Francis the Mute (GSL, 2005). Metal picked up the concept mantle in a big way. Devilish icons like King Diamond wouldn’t have records if it weren’t for album-long narratives. The same can be said for Coheed and Cambria with their multi-album and …

I’ve spent the last several days reflecting on Adam Yauch and the Beastie Boys, their music, their projects, and their place as a cultural force. Growing up when I did, the Beasties were unavoidable. Every car, every boombox, every top-ten radio countdown had License to Ill (Def Jam, 1986) on blast. I hated it, but as much as I was repelled by the frat-boy antics of that record, it was impossible to ignore the significance. You knew you were witnessing something historic, that somehow things were different after that. And …

I was pulling into my friend Thomas Durdin’s driveway. By the volume of the AC-DC sample that forms the backbone of Boogie Down Productions’ “Dope Beat” (the first song on the second side of their 1986 debut album, Criminal Minded), I knew his mom wasn’t home. Along with the block-rocking decibel level, I was also struck by how the odd and primitive pairing of Australian hard rock and New York street slang sounded. It was gritty. It was brash. It rocked.

De La Soul’s 1995 record Stakes is High opens with various voices …

No one can really tell you how to write. It’s a matter of finding what works for you. Since posting my last piece on writing, I talked to several people about their processes and remembered some things that should’ve been included last time around. I consider most of these higher-order aspects of the task, but they might not seem so to you. It all depends on where you are as a writer, and I’m not exactly an expert. Either way, this should be taken as an addendum to the other piece.

Writing …

Publishing has its problems. Academic publishing has its as well, and in turn public intellectualism has problems. With the rise of ebooks, self-publishing, blogging (oh, how I loathe that term), and the like, all of this seems to be coming to a head. I have chosen a path that attempts to eschew these issues. This is not to say that I am above academic publishing, but to say that I am not interested in being read by such a small audience. I am also not necessarily interested in scientific rigor …

I have a real hatred of false headlines, titles of articles that lie about their contents. The latest one to catch my ire was James Altucher’s “Self-Publishing Your Own Book is the New Business Card.” Mainly because, well, it isn’t. As much as we may try with apps and QR-codes, as well as traditional things like stickers and postcards, there still isn’t a token of identity that works like a business card. I don’t wholly disagree with Altucher’s article, just the parts where he claims his headline. The article is …

I started writing poems and comics, and making fake newspapers at the age of six. Having grown up with an artist mom and always drawing, painting, or making something, I thought I’d end up an artist. I started making photocopied zines in my teens and taught myself how to turn events and interviews into pages with staples, but my driving interest (aside from the BMX, skateboarding, and music content that inspired those zines in the first place) was originally in the layouts. Balancing words and images on the page excited …