Bathroom Cop
A hardcore band of no particular renown, White Shit performed for just two years before they, too, were cast into history’s septic tank.
What Sticks?
I used to think wearing your tastes like a badge was a low-level way of listening. I know now that everyone wears their tastes like a badge; that’s how music functions.
The Life and Times of Little Richard, King and Queen of Rock’n’Roll
I am the originator. I am the emancipator. I am the architect of rock n' roll.
Beautiful Boy
This is a drawing of my room that I made for one of my classes. On the cloud it says, “The world is turning, I hope it don’t turn away.” That’s a really good lyric from a song called “On the Beach.”
Short People
Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don't care if they lose it; they'll just make another one.
Where Are You Tonight?
Will Oldham recorded as Palace, Palace Brothers, Palace Music, then under his given name, then Bonnie Prince Billy, then Oldham again. You had to keep track, but the songs were good—almost timeless—and with more time on his hands, Oldham’s doing good things.
Being on Zoom
I was on Zoom when I was ten.
Actually, I was nine when I started. It was the 70s, 4th grade, and one of my mother’s friends told her that Zoom, the TV show, was holding auditions. She thought I might like to try out.
Silent Prayer
I have, for instance, several new desires (two may seem absurd but I am serious about them): first, to compose a piece of uninterrupted silence and sell it to Muzak Co. It will be 3 or 4½ minutes long—those being the standard lengths of “canned” music—and its title will be Silent Prayer. It will open with a single idea which I will attempt to make as seductive as the color and shape and fragrance of a flower.
Go Home. Shut Up. Grow Up.
I remember vividly the first time I ever heard the Velvet Underground. I was in a garage in Davis, California, where I was attending college in the late '70's. I was actually at a rehearsal. In a literal garage band—both in terms of location and intention. We were more on the mark in the former than the latter at the time.
Słoń
If Philip Roth had done nothing but edit Penguin’s series of “Writers from the Other Europe,” he would have done right by the world. But other publishers were mining the Eastern Bloc, too. In 1984 Grove published Slawomir Mrozek’s The Elephant. The Spectator blurb on my copy says, “Extraordinary! Something like Kafka’s stories but funnier.”