“I…have no interest in living in a city without a bookstore.” Ann Patchett has opened a Parnassus Books, a bookstore in Nashville. In related news: fuck yeah, Ann Patchett. New poetry from Kevin Sampsell. Vulture chats with Ann Beattie about Mrs. Nixon. Ken Baumann puts in his two cents about Dennis Cooper’s The Marbled Swarm. Drag City is bringing the Groovy Records catalog back into print. The deadline for Word Riot’s travel grants for writers for the first quarter of […]
Top Ten Documents of Old and Forgotten Sounds in 2009
By Jason Diamond 1. A Fine Romance (Nextbook) takes a look at the very hefty Jewish contribution to the Great American songbook. The work of names like Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and others is explored in this lovingly written book by poet David Lehman. 2. Documenting the generation after the big boom of Mississippi bluesmen making their migration north, Chicago photographer Michael Abramson made his way to his cities South Side, snapping photos from 1975-77 for what would […]
Video Obsession: Lights, “Fire Dance”
Did you ever dream about Fleetwood Mac gobbling all of the psychedelic drugs in the universe and going to a disco? Oh, you didn’t? Well, you don’t really have to, because Drag City has put out the second album from Brooklyn band Lights, and it basically sounds like the weird and amazing situation mentioned above.