Terry Sawyer

Features

Music

Dead Grammy Walking

[12.Feb.08] :. The Grammys are a tradition whose bottom has fallen out, a relic still standing only because people are too bored to say otherwise.

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TV

MTV Killed the Video Star: The MTV Video Music Awards

[12.Sep.07] :. The overall effect from watching this year's MTV VMAs was club drug vertigo -- but with none of the fun of the club or the drugs.

Recent features

 

Music

Karen Dalton: In My Own Time

[25.Jul.07] :. Just as the ambiguous details surrounding Nick Drake's death led people to exhaustively make his sorrow sacred, Karen Dalton was soul country's undiscovered Ophelia.

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Culture

Don't Mess With Texas: The Lone Star State Loses Its Greatest Spitfire

[4.Feb.07] :. Molly Ivins was one of the world's most gifted bar stool philosophers, someone who effortlessly segued into the world of ideas from the sure-footed ground of details.

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Columns

Mind Over Matters

Meta-Bullshit: The Trouble with Sarah Silverman and the Fawning Cult of Meta-Bigotry

[20.Jan.06] :. In the guise of smarts, there's woeful lack of intellect. Silverman tears-up the historical significance of the words she uses only to quilt them back together in meticulously parsed clashes of shock.

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Mind Over Matters

Fighting Chance

[12.Jan.05] :. After the 2004 US Presidential election, part of me still waited for the Diebold voting scandals to unfold, irrationally hoping that Bush's victory was simply a dirty backroom handshake hammered out during an Illuminati luncheon at Cracker Barrel.

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Mind Over Matters

Smear the Queer

[10.Nov.04] :. We were too frightened by the possibility of Bush's reelection to recognize that Kerry frets his way around the language of values, handling it in his speeches the way macho men hold their wives' purses for them.

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Mind Over Matters

Derailing the Peace Train

[6.Oct.04] :. If the former Cat Stevens were barred entry to the US due to his bad music, one might not feel compelled to defend him. As it is, we've got a problem, here.

Recent columns

 

Mind Over Matters

The Rape of Logic: Conservatives and Abu Ghraib

[9.Jun.04] :. Conservatives have tried at every turn to whore out the country's existential fears since 9-11. Abu Ghraib is no exception. Maybe I should be more understanding of the environmental factors that have caused the Right to abandon their rhetoric of individual responsibility.

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Mind Over Matters   Kill Your Television Before It Kills You

Mind Over Matters   We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off

Mind Over Matters   Queering the Mic

Reviews

Music

Hanne Hukkelberg: Rykestrasse 68

[7.Mar.08] :. Rykestrasse 68 is not the record you put on when you're trying to multi-task your way onto the next thing on your list. It rewards stillness, listening, and deciphering.

Recent Music reviews

 

DVDs

Plasmatics: Wendy O. Williams and The Plasmatics: The DVD - Ten Years of Revolutionary Rock and Roll

[30.May.07] :. A band so bold and extraordinary in its thinking and live intensity deserves a more driven and inquisitive introduction.

Recent DVD reviews

 

TV

The 2007 Grammy Awards

[13.Feb.07] :. Awards shows like The Grammys are built around a torturous rhythm much like a faucet dripping in the middle of the night.

Recent TV reviews

 

DVDs

Wanda Sykes - Sick and Tired (2006)

[30.Jan.07] :. Sick & Tired serves laughter like Sykes prefers her drinking: straight no chaser kissing the rim of a bottomless glass.

Recent DVD reviews

 

Events

Ladytron

[30.Oct.06] :. Anyone looking for a shimmy between fixes?

Recent Event reviews

 

Books   The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, PhD

Music    Willie Hightower: Willie Hightower

TV   Three Wishes

Books   Star Struck by Pamela Anderson

DVDs   Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin - The Untold Story

TV   The Ghost Whisperer

TV   My Name Is Earl

Music    Elkland: Golden

TV   Hidden Howie: The Public Life of a Private Nuisance

TV   Hit Me Baby One More Time

Music    Pine*am: Pull the Rabbit Ears

TV   I Want to Be a Hilton

Music    Tiger Saw: Gimme Danger/Gimme Sweetness

DVDs   Horns and Halos (2002)

Music    Miss Kittin: I Com

TV   Trailer Park Boys

Music    Talib Kweli: The Beautiful Struggle

DVDs   Harsh Realm

DVDs   Deadline (2004)

TV   Wanda Does It

TV   Blue Collar TV

Music    Heidi Saperstein: Zara

DVDs   Outfoxed (2004)

Music    Various Artists: Italia Nova: The Rough Guide to Italia Nova

Music    Brandy: Afrodisiac

DVDs   South Park: The Passion of The Jew

Music    Wiley: Treddin' on Thin Ice

TV   Six Feet Under

DVDs   How's Your News? (1999)

Music    The Roots: The Tipping Point

Music    Various Artists: Zen -- A Retrospective / Zen -- Remixes

Music    The Owls: Our Hopes and Dreams

Music    The Cardigans: Lone Gone Before Daylight

Music    Ty: Upwards

Music    All Girl Summer Fun Band: Summer of '98 EP

TV   Good Day Live

TV   Kingdom Hospital

Music    Garlic: Jam Sabbatical

Music    Mya: Moodring

Music    Dirt Bike Annie: Show Us Your Demons

Music    Pete Rock: Lost and Found: Hip-Hop Underground Soul Classics

Music   Mice Parade: obrigado saudade

Music    T-Love: Long Way Back

Music    Da Lata: Serious

TV   The Simple Life

Music    Peaches: Fatherfucker

DVDs   Amateur (1994)

Music    Sarai: The Original

Music    Her Space Holiday: The Young Machines

Music    My Morning Jacket: It Still Moves

Music    Brassy: Gettin Wise

TV   Miss Match

Music    The Neptunes: Clones

Music    Benjamin Gibbard & Andrew Kenny: Home

Music    Broadcast: HaHa Sound

Music    The Moving Units: self-titled

DVDs   Israel - A Nation is Born (2003)

TV   Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

Music    Black Eyed Peas: Elephunk

Music    Iron & Wine: The Creek Drank the Cradle

Music    Thalia Zedek: You're a Big Girl Now

DVDs   Love Liza (2002)

TV   Da Ali G Show

Music    Pram: Dark Island

Music    Laika: Lost in Space, Vol. 1

TV   Real Time with Bill Maher

TV   Wanda at Large

Music    Lil' Kim: Hardcore

Music    The Snitches: Star Witness

Music    MC Paul Barman: Paullelujah!

Music    Funky Porcini: Fast Asleep

Music    Various Artists: Ragazza Pop

Music    Yohimbe Brothers: Front End Lifter

Music   Stars of the Lid: Avec Laudenum

Music    Rosey: Dirty Child

Music    Sucka MCs: Da Album

Music    Andy Stochansky: Five Star Motel

Music    The Telescopes: Third Wave

Music    Swayzak: Dirty Dancing

Music    Beachwood Sparks: Make the Cowboy Robots Cry

Music    Li'l Cap'n Travis: Lonesome and Losin'

Music    Various Artists: Location Is Everything Volume 1

Music    The Trouble with Sweeney: Play Karen and Others

Music    The Microphones: Song Islands

Blog posts

Sound Affects

Arctic R&B

[15.Aug.08] :. Polyhedron - Little Jinder

Sound Affects

 

Sound Affects

Good Bad, and Probably Evil

[25.Jul.08] :. Wendy Ho -Bitch, I Stole Your Purse

Sound Affects

 

Sound Affects

The Cynic's Summer Single

[22.Jul.08] :. Sincerely, Jane - Janelle Monae

Sound Affects

 

Sound Affects

Perez Hilton, The Answer With No Question

[28.Jun.08] :. I'm a pretty begrudging late adopter of the music blogosphere; someone deeply skeptical about its grandiose claims of revolutionary potential. At this point, it appears little more than an en masse,...

Sound Affects

 

Sound Affects

I Could Have Your Guts for Garters

[25.Jun.08] :. Unorthodox Daughter - No Lay

Sound Affects

 

Sound Affects   Cheap and Cheerless

Sound Affects   Elvis Was The Male Wanda Jackson

Sound Affects   It's My Video, It's My Fantasy

Sound Affects   Anti-Intellectualism and Music Criticism

Sound Affects   Youth Without Youth

Sound Affects   Float Like a Schizo, Sting Like the Elderly

Sound Affects   Big Baby Jesus Getting Food Stamps

Sound Affects   Trapped in a Courtroom with R. Kelly

Sound Affects   The Decemberists Win by a Landslide

Sound Affects   You Ain't Got No Lover

Sound Affects   Do Your Homework

Sound Affects   Sleepwalking to Sunset

Sound Affects   Urinal Disco

Sound Affects   Are We Post-Queer Yet?

Sound Affects   Wristslitters of the World, Unite and Take Over

Sound Affects   Goodbye Magazines, Goodbye Critics

Sound Affects   Stamping the Night With Vigor

Sound Affects   Erykah Badu Riffs On Women and Music

Sound Affects   Move Over Winehouse, Now There's Someone Sober

Sound Affects   Klosterman Tackles Downloading B.S.

Sound Affects   Ego, Tripping

Sound Affects   Apocalypse Meow

Sound Affects   Great Single - Proof That Poultry Doesn't Make a Name

Sound Affects   The Artist as Buddhist Warrior

Sound Affects   What's the Point of the Pop Hit Covered as a Ballad

 
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