Nextplease

Joe has posted some obscure MP3’s for downloading over at http://jacktalcum.com. First up, there are some old Ornamental Wigwam songs from 1988. The Wigwam was a project that Joe and Dave Blood from the Milkmen did on the side. These songs came from a taped performance on Penn’s Cable TV channel. Says Joe:
Band Wagon was [...]

I’m just thinking out loud here…
With all the attention that blogs have been getting from the mainstream media (and not just lately…), I am thinking that online blog style publishing has entered a phase analogous to the period college rock entered in the early 90’s when Nirvana broke into the mainstream radio world. “College Rock” [...]

Over at Irregular Orbit, Mike has asked for visitors to submit their top 11 desert island discs. Here’s mine (in no particular order):
1. Swordfishtrombones - Tom Waits: Sweet and sour. Unique instrumentation. I remember walking into the old Listening Booth record shop in the Richland Mall and hearing “Underground” over the store’s stereo system. I [...]

Came across a few interesting/frustrating political articles:
Hunger for Dictatorship - Scott McConnell in The American Conservative writes that some conservative thinkers are feeling the US population is edging toward “proto-fascist” tendencies. Interesting coming from a conservative viewpoint though not too surprising from a magazine co-founded by Pat Buchanan—he’s been a vocal antagonist of [...]

Continuum Books “is the trade and academic imprint of the Continuum International Publishing Group, a growing family of religious, trade and academic publishers headquartered in London, with offices in New York, Harrisburg, Denver, Bristol and Poole.” (or so says the website…). Regardless, because of this, I’ve just connected my interests in the indie rock band [...]

I’ve added new links and a new gallery to my photos section of the site. There is a link to a new gallery of images from a summer trip to Vermont last year. Fungi - Norton Pond Vermont 2004 displays 16 photos I took on the last day of our vacation. While waiting to depart, [...]

There is an excellent article in the current anniversary issue of The New Yorker magazine by Richard Preston entitled “Climbing The Redwoods” (unfortunately the article is not online).
Preston is working on a book about tree climbing and spent some time in the Northern California redwoods with Stephen Sillett and his wife Marie Antoine—researchers on the [...]

I’ve just finished England’s Dreaming by Jon Savage. It took me a year but in the end I enjoyed it. It’s the story of Malcolm McLaren, punk rock’s beginnings, and the creation of the Sex Pistols—along with a heavy dose of history regarding England’s culture, politics and mood in the late 1970’s. Highly recommended.

I followed up England’s Dreaming with a slim volume by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Twenty Days with Julian and Little Bunny by Papa is an account of Hawthorne’s time spent caring for his five year old son Julian while his wife was away visiting her mother in Boston. The book is taken from Hawthorne’s American Notebooks and [...]