Better than even Kurt Cobain, Elliott Smith provides a case study of the effects of fame. Though his rise was just as mercurial, the changes wrought were more profound and more eerie. Benjamin Nugent treats this flight to fame with a delicate touch, showing as many sides of Elliott as he was able to access. The result is a book about the pitfalls of the rise to public attention, its effects on friendships, and a man who fought against everything to maintain the one thing he truly lost: control. Nugent’s …

Even in the midst of today’s mega-media all-at-onceness (to quote Marshall McLuhan), Skateboarding culture remains as dynamic and engaging as it ever has been. For anyone who’s ever stepped on a skateboard — and stayed on it for that first run — the culture surrounding that act leaves a dent in you. It’s often a butterfly effect the results of which aren’t recognized until years later.

While I struggle to keep a few websites updated and maybe put out a ’zine a year, Adam Voith publishes books. Not only that, but he does it differently. TNI Books (Adam’s imprint) puts out a biannual magazine/book thing called Little Engines (crammed with short stories by the leaders of the new literature underground, sandwiched between a few pages of ads), excellent novels (some of which he also writes), and random other printed matter. He also maintains engaging blogs and the TNI web empire.

In her recent book Utopian Entrepreneur, Brenda Laurel describes a dialectic between the high art of the academy and the lowly wares of pop culture, writing, “Philosophical, political, and spiritual matters are seen to be central to the discourses of the arts and humanities, not the material of popular culture. Too many artists circumscribe their audiences by restricting themselves to a kind of peer-to-peer philosophical dialogue, conducted exclusively in the academy and the gallery.” Blurring the lines, she bucks the term “artist” and instead calls it “culture work,” adding, “It’s …

Milemarker posted a critical essay from a fan on their website sometime in early 2002, and invited others to respond. This is my response (which was on their site for a while).
Endeavoring to critique a band/collective/commodity like Milemarker inevitably opens us all to nit-picking perceptions, semantics, our own roles in the play, and other topics about which we could write many volumes. I only wish here to present my own experience, thoughts and opinions about Milemarker. Perhaps this is the best I — or any one of us — can …

Cynthia Connolly has been a fixture in the DC punk rock scene since its voice started echoing out of the Capital. The independent stalwarts of Dischord in DC, K Records, and Killrockstars in Olympia, WA are among her friends and her photo subjects: She takes pictures and makes postcards — one series of which was of many of these musicians and their cars.

The collective known as Milemarker has a vast and prolific output that encompasses much more than the average independent band: Dave Laney puts out a printed alternative media quarterly called MediaReader, Al Burian self-publishes a ’zine of his travels and views therefrom called Burn Collector (the first nine of which are collected into a book) and Roby Newton does traveling puppet shows and animations.