Brian Eno’s ‘Here Come the Warm Jets’ After 50 Years
Brian Eno’s approach captured the best of what we wanted from punk, new wave, prog, glam, and classic ’60s pop and channeled their excesses by relying on chance.
David Pike
David Pike writes regularly on music, film, neo-Victorianism, subterranea, urban fantasy, modernism, global urban culture, and Paris and London, and is the author of half a dozen books, most recently After the End: Cold War Culture and Apocalyptic Imaginations in the 21st Century. He teaches in the Department of Literature at American University.For more on his writing, please visit his author page at Bright Lights Film Journal and his faculty profile page at American University.
For the Love of the Crappy Cassette Tape
The peculiar technology of the lo-fi, crappy cassette tape exemplifies the inherent contradictions of popular music better than any other medium.
C. D. Rose’s ‘Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea’ Plays Familiar Games with Time
Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea plays with postmodernism, autofiction, philosophy, and a short story canon peopled by writers from Augustine to Raymond Carver.
Teju Cole’s ‘Tremor’ Records a Post-COVID Landscape of Art and Rage
If there is any consolation to be had in Teju Cole’s slippery and sinuous Tremor, it’s not found in art or literature but in the music that permeates its pages.
In the Wake of the Grateful Dead in 1973
Looking back after 50 years at the Grateful Dead’s pivotal year of 1973, including Wake of the Flood and three November nights at Winterland.
NYC’s Underground Scene: ‘This Must Be the Place’
Music may be the glue of every NYC underground scene This Must Be the Place covers, but Jesse Rifkin’s primary interest is in the community held together by that glue.
‘Going For Broke’: Life on the Edge By Those Who Live It
Going for Broke: Living on the Edge in the World’s Richest Country turns to the real experts on economic hardship in America: those who live it.
Just Growing Old? Steely Dan’s ‘Countdown to Ecstasy’ at 50
Steely Dan’s Countdown to Ecstasy reveals a progression toward ever more sheen and polish on a smooth shell, the source of the “yacht rock” label that defined them.
Slow Burn: Bob Marley’s ‘Catch a Fire’ 50 Years Later
Bob Marley’s Catch a Fire is when the Wailers transformed into the vehicle of his ascent to superstardom and reggae’s assimilation into the global pop music melting pot.
Why Is There Still So Much Nostalgia for Nuclear Apocalypse?
The popularity of nuclear apocalypse is nostalgia for a time when our worries were wrapped in a single nuclear package, and all we needed was a bunker and a dream.
Back to Earth on Elf Power’s ‘Artificial Countrysides’
On Artificial Countrysides, Elf Power ground cosmic apocalypse and global destruction into fever dreams from their own backyard.
Andrew Bird’s ‘Inside Problems’ Burrows into Pop History
Andrew Bird’s Inside Problems burrows into Beethoven, the Velvet Underground, ’60s pop, and his own back catalog.