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Culture Pop Culture: Finding Meaning and Purpose in the Neighborhood By Rev. Doug Gebhard [23.Jul.08] :. Whether intentionally spiritual or not, popular culture and its products serve many of the same drives of religion: making meaning and forging the bonds of community.

Music The Lioness and the Wildebeests: Tori Amos on Going Independent By Erin Lyndal Martin [22.Jul.08] :. Finally free from her major-label shackles, Tori Amos reflects on what went wrong during her major-label career, what she plans to do next, and how it feels becoming a comic book icon.

Culture Pathways to Creation: Exploring Sacred Music in Fes, Morocco By Derek Beres [21.Jul.08] :. PopMatters goes to Morocco for the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music to honor and share the world’s great spiritual music traditions. At this 14th annual festival, Derek Beres would hear the indigenous sounds of Vietnam, Tunisia, Norway, Pakistan, Belgium, America, and much more.

Amy Ray By PopMatters Staff [21.Jul.08] :. Amy Ray: Talking the talk and walking the walk, this singer/songwriter brings you the world with each song.

Events Don’t Forget Your Wellies: Glastonbury 2008 By Cole Stryker [18.Jul.08] :. With only a flimsy $15 tent and wellington boots for protection, PopMatters’ Cole Stryker avoided Amy Winehouse’s punches, the mud, and John Mayer, at the annual global gathering that is the Glastonbury Festival.

Music Nothing’s Shocking: An Interview With Lydia Lunch By Drew Fortune [18.Jul.08] :. As Lydia Lunch -- No Wave pioneer, Teenage Jesus frontwoman, and life-long provocateur -- sees her landmark tell-all book Paradoxia get re-published for the first time in over a decade, she sits down to talk to PopMatters about breaking taboos, rocking out, and knowing just how to push everybody's buttons.

Politics International Lampoon: (Don’t Be) Mad (At The) Magazine By David Swerdlick [17.Jul.08] :. The New Yorker may have outsmarted itself. Its core readership is left of center and they care about the things that Obama cares about. But the cartoon may have the effect of encouraging Obama's opponents to step up their mythmaking because they've been provided with "cover" by a respected liberal magazine.

Life Savers: Girl Talk By Jason Cook [17.Jul.08] :. Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis) made me do something I never thought I would again: enjoy pop music.

Multimedia Redefining the Game: A Look at Machinima By L.B. Jeffries [16.Jul.08] :. "Whatever we're doing, it's all story telling -- and if the story's bad then the appeal can't last to the gamer crowd let alone anyone else."

The Buck Brothers By PopMatters Staff [16.Jul.08] :. Known for funky, punky pop, the Buck Brothers have a big time love for Earth, Wind & Fire as you'll see in this installment of PopMatters' 20 Questions.

Music “Once You Saw Them Live, You Were Hooked Forever”: An Interview With Don Letts By Ron Hart [15.Jul.08] :. With the 30th Anniversary release of the seminal Clash documentary Revolution Rock, director Don Letts reflects on the sheer power of seeing the Only Band That Mattered in a live setting, the possibility of a Big Audio Dynamite reissue, and his unabashed love... for Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Music Activity Placement: Why Kanye Needs Us and We Need Him By Thomas Hauner [14.Jul.08] :. Kanye West is a bona fide hit-maker. But his real genius lies in his ability to match songs to consumer behavior, marketing his music less as a product and more as the perfect accompaniment to the activities of daily life.

David Ford By PopMatters Staff [14.Jul.08] :. If you want to talk with singer/songwriter David Ford, you'll find him at the pizza joint with his wife and friends -- many blocks away from The Ritz.

Blink 182: No Sell Out By Nathan Housley [11.Jul.08] :. The old narratives of “punk” could no longer hold together in light of a radically new culture -- pop punk, as heard in Blink 182's music, left the constraining categories behind.

Music Pretty Odd: An Interview With Panic at the Disco By Katrina-Kasey Wheeler [11.Jul.08] :. Frontman Brendon Urie demonstrates that maturing can be a good thing for a band, but don't think that no one's having fun.

Music Shadows No More: An Interview With Eddie Willis of the Funk Brothers By Zeth Lundy [10.Jul.08] :. Guitarist Eddie Willis takes us from the beginnings of Motown through the band's current activities, all with a sense of amazement that he's been part of something so big.

Books Secondhand Wonderland: The World of the Used Book By PopMatters Staff [9.Jul.08] :. This week in "Secondhand Wonderland": Justin Dimos dissects Bloomington, Indiana's historical secondhand bookstore. Deanne Sole journeys Melbourne's charity outlets, exploring the fundamentals of the down under St. Vincent de Paul outlet.

The Motion Sick By PopMatters Staff [9.Jul.08] :. Named SPIN's “Band of the Month” for their first release, Her Brilliant Fifteen, the Motion Sick draw parallels to Vonnegut with lyrics ringing of social commentary. Mike Epstein answers PopMatters' 20 Questions.

In Memoriam: Thomas M. Disch By Chris Barsanti [9.Jul.08] :. It's often said of uncommonly talented writers that they defied description; in Disch's case, that actually managed to be true.

Politics Pleased to Meet Me: A Pre-Post Racial Tribute to Barack Obama By David Swerdlick [8.Jul.08] :. Maybe the Obama phenomenon is neither the beginning nor the end of the national conversation on race. Maybe it's half-time.

Music Tales of Mighty Antietam By Jon Langmead [7.Jul.08] :. With the release of their new epic double-album, rock stalwarts Antietam sit down with PopMatters' Jon Langmead to dissect their long, storied, and powerful past, pulling off shoestring-budget miracles in the hopes that just one song is all that is needed to change your life.

Rahsaan Patterson By Christian John Wikane [7.Jul.08] :. The purveyor of 21st century soul chats with PopMatters 20 Questions about chocolate, Chaka Khan, and the significance of Snoopy.

Books Fareed Zakaria’s View of a Post-American World By Nav Purewal [3.Jul.08] :. No one book will make all the difference, but familiarity with this particular volume would help ensure that the 44th President of the US is better equipped to deal with America’s changing role than the 43rd.

Multimedia Beyond the Core Gamer: An Interview with Wideload Games’ Alex Seropian By Ryan Smith [3.Jul.08] :. "There's huge potential for the market to grow, and the only way we're going to get there is if there are games available that address an audience beyond the core gamer."

TV “Swiper, No Swiping!”: The Demonology of Dora the Explorer By Dennis P. Quinn [1.Jul.08] :. With his moral ambiguity, ritualistic expulsions, and trickster ways, Dora the Explorer's Swiper is an archetypal image of the diabolical fox-spirit in the history of religions -- which might be an unacknowledged lesson for children.

Music Dispatches From the Battlefield: An Interview With Van Hunt By Christian John Wikane [30.Jun.08] :. Van Hunt recorded one of the best albums of 2008: Popular. The only problem is you're not going to hear it.

Deborah Bonham By PopMatters Staff [30.Jun.08] :. Sweetly soulful and powerful (think Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin), blues-rock singer-songwriter Deborah Bonham chats with PopMatters 20 Questions about Paul Rodgers, a beautiful ex-racehorse named Jack, and other inspirations in her life and music.

Theater Samuel Beckett: Beyond the Endgame By Marijeta Bozovic [27.Jun.08] :. Beckett’s dramatic work has been largely viewed as Theater of the Absurd but make no mistake, Endgame is Waiting for Godot's evil twin.

High and Low: Film Forum Presents: Nakadai By Michael Buening [27.Jun.08] :. New York’s Film Forum offers an ambitious and inspired film series this summer, dedicated to the films of Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai. The series is as entertaining, provocative, and intricate as its subject.

Multimedia The World Remade: An Interview with the Creators of Alpha Omega By Glenn McDonald [26.Jun.08] :. Glenn McDonald talks to the creators of Alpha Omega about their new table top game, the challenge of game development, and that little Cloverfield mix-up.

Finding Common Ground By John Bohannon [26.Jun.08] :. Caetano Veloso’s 1973 album Araçá Azul is as defiantly unconventional and challenging as Godard’s pioneering New Wave classic Breathless (1960), altering the possibilities and expectations of his chosen medium.

Music “The Real is Just as Magical as the Fictitious”: An Intimate Talk with Saul Williams By Chris Catania [24.Jun.08] :. Few people would give their new album away for free online. Fewer would stop a prison brawl by reciting a poem. Fewer still do all this while making a powerful statement about the issue of race in our country today. Saul Williams does all these things.

Events Primavera Sound 2008 By Cole Stryker and Pablo Amor [23.Jun.08] :. With no mud to be found, the Mediterranean close by, and an air-conditioned, indoor stage with actual audience seating, Primavera Sound seems like festival heaven. Yet the pendulum still swung wildly for our writers at Spain’s premier musical festival.

Alan Cumming By PopMatters Staff [23.Jun.08] :. Stage, TV and film actor, model, Tony Award-winner and new Masterpiece Mystery! host Alan Cumming speaks with PopMatters 20 Questions about Dionysus, the prudency of using prophylactics, and Leon, the singing Chihuahua.

Books The Solitary Vice: Has Reading Really Made You a Better Person? By Mikita Brottman [20.Jun.08] :. In this third excerpt of PopMatters' first book, The Solitary Vice: Against Reading, by Mikita Brottman, Brottman tells us about the dark, pathological side of reading.

Grateful Dead: Winterland 1973: The Complete Recordings By Stuart Henderson [20.Jun.08] :. Ultimately, what I am trying to say is this: The Dead can be appreciated -- indeed, probably must be appreciated -- as a kind of continuing, evolving, shifty performance of “The Grateful Dead”.

Dark Meat [Athens, GA] By Fletcher Babb [19.Jun.08] :. Dark Meat is cutting a wild, grimy, jazz-punk path across the musical landscape, and they want you to join them -- in the audience, on-stage, whatever.

Film The Technology of the Occult: Méliès and the Invention of Film By Chadwick Jenkins [19.Jun.08] :. Like any illusionist, Méliès created wonderment with only the slightest of pretense, creating a filmic language that continues to be explored and exploited today.

Music Clearer Vision: An interview With David Berman of the Silver Jews By Jennifer Kelly [17.Jun.08] :. The Silver Jews' David Berman recently underwent eye surgery that both physically and metaphorically extended his range of vision. He talks to PopMatters about being able to see farther in so many ways.

Memory of a Free Festival By Annie Holub [16.Jun.08] :. The carefully curated lineups at the big multiday summer music festivals promise an unforgettable experience for fans -- those who can afford to go, that is.

Rhett Miller of the Old 97’s By PopMatters Staff [16.Jun.08] :. Rhett Miller, lead vocalist of the Old 97's, chats with PopMatters' 20 Questions about fantasy football, his affinity for the protagonist in Wallace's Infinite Jest, and this neat little trick he does with spoons.

Flying Alone: Edward Hopper and America’s Night Side By David Masciotra [13.Jun.08] :. Isolation is more than being alone. That is why the greatest and most discomforting presentation of isolation can be found in Hopper's paintings that include more than one person.

Stranded in the Middle of Nowhere: One Adolescent’s Experience of Gregg Araki By Justin Dimos [13.Jun.08] :. Recently popularized for the success of Mysterious Skin (2006), filmmaker Gregg Araki has exposed the Gen Y-er longing for tenderness in a world drowned in pop culture and violence to movies such as Nowhere, the personal savior of the 26-year-old Justin Dimos.

Music “It’s a Masochistic Stare-Down”: An Interview With Adam Green By Evan Sawdey [12.Jun.08] :. The former Moldy Peaches frontman scored with Juno's "Anyone Else But You", but he's a busy man with a brand new solo album, getting hung up on Johnny Depp, and having French boys thank him for writing "such impersonal music".

Music The Dawn That Grows Into Day: High Noons, Twilights, the Beach Boys, and Dennis Wilson By Zeth Lundy [11.Jun.08] :. A pair of new Beach Boys releases -- a 16-disc box set of singles and the reissue of Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue -- examines the group's resonance beyond the lauded Pet Sounds era.

Film The Phantasmagoric Phantom Carriage By Marco Lanzagorta [11.Jun.08] :. The Phantom Carriage was truly revolutionary in the way it exploited the unique features of motion pictures, and clearly anticipated the sophisticated narrative and visual structure of modern films.

Music The Shredder Cometh: An Interview with Tim Reynolds By Robert Costa [10.Jun.08] :. Guitarist Tim Reynolds has recently joined Dave Matthews Band on the road and in the studio for the first time since 1998. Last week, Reynolds spoke with PopMatters' Robert Costa in an exclusive backstage interview to talk about DMB and his own band TR3.

Spinoza’s Ethic By Ian Mathers [10.Jun.08] :. Mathers explores how the Ethic was a life saver not in the sense of sustaining him through dark periods, but by changing his sense of what life is.

Through the Grapevine By Sara Tenenbaum [9.Jun.08] :. With celebrity-crazy blogs like Dlisted and Oh No They Didn't growing in prominence and touting an anarchic and egalitarian spirit, has gossip become the ruling media form of our era?

Thomas Dolby By PopMatters Staff [9.Jun.08] :. Thomas Dolby's electronic impulses are fed by neurological brainstorms generated by the likes of Oliver Sacks and the artists and scientists of TED. PopMatters' 20 Questions gets a zap from Dolby's electrifying fingertips.

Adah Isaacs Menken: The First Broadway Star By Barbara Foster and Michael Foster [6.Jun.08] :. A predecessor to virtually all stage and screen sirens, Menken thumbed her nose at the Victorian fetish for decorum that deformed the female figure, and celebrated her body electric, firm and active before being wasted from typhus or riddled by bullets.

Shriekback and Me By Rett Snotherly [6.Jun.08] :. Rett Snotherly reflects on the familiar tale of the emotional ties to a beloved band stretching across time, and how the impact of youth's engagement remains a part of us that lingers years later.

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2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999