Chumbawamba interview

Finally posted the entirety of my miners-strike-history interview with Boff from Chumbawamba over at The Old Weird Albion. There’s actually been a few new posts over there, maybe worth checking out? Eh? Huh?

The Skablins Archive

 

Original 7" artwork by Pgh rock legend John Roman

It’s been about 18 years since Pittsburgh’s second-ever ska band (big-ups to Kingpin, who I never got to see!) made its debut, and about 1.5 years since I started saying I was gonna put the recordings I have of that band up online for any masochists to download. Well, now it’s gone and happened, hasn’t it, so – yeah – here’s a link to download the complete recorded output of THE SKABLINS (not to be confused with this Skablins, the alter-ego of Canadian garage punks Thee Goblins, or this one, some new band in the NW that has a logo much like a Wychwood beer).

 

From 1991-1996 (ish), The Skablins played a bunch’a shows, released one solitary 45, and drank a kind-of absurd quantity of canned beer with names like American, Schlitz, Jacob Best, and even Lushan (a Chinese beer that bassist K.T.’s dad bought a truck-load of and then sold us for, like, $4 a case or something… it had stuff living in it…).

Back cover featuring the famous (huh?) Peps Your Step logo

 

These recordings include a vast span of lineups, especially considering there’s only about 25-ish minutes of music. There are live recordings from our stronghold of Lancaster, PA, with the original Skablins lineup; there are studio recordings from that-one-guy’s house who ate bunches of hallucinogens while you recorded but only charged about $15/hour; there’s the songs done for our two-song single (“Food Chain” and “Staring Into the Sun”). Some of it’s from DAT’s, most of it’s from a cassette that JimiFred Hendrix found under his couch cushions or something. So, yeah – TOP-NOTCH sound quality.

OH, AND HERE’S THE LINK TO THE SENDSPACE THINGY SO YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THIS CRAP.

 

Tim Kaulen at the PCA

 

Early Response

A historical statement disguised as a review of Tim Kaulen’s ‘artist of the year’ show at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. There are magnificent things happening in Pittsburgh these days, with an influx in both quality and quantity of non-profit arts and cultural organizations and funding for like projects. But I think it’s incredibly important to remember that, a very very few years ago, there was very little organizational and funding opportunity for the artists who catalyzed this current renaissance in a lot of different direct and indirect ways. And that’s one of the things that made Pittsburgh – and MAKES Pittsburgh – such a special place to live: It’s a place of chaos, and through that chaos, a special breed of self-motivated opportunity, rather than the traditional ones. It’s brilliant that there are ‘third way’ and even governmental and business opportunities springing up, and that’s a huge important step. But that doesn’t mean that we should leave out the people and groups that function outside those borders.

 

Rawlins Band

Profile of entomologist extraordinaire, John Rawlins, in the new Carnegie Magazine – I think the layout of this on paper is really beautiful, but even online you can see how great Josh Franzos’ photos are (in particular the one in the header at the top – again, better in print…).

El Camino: The performance

This week’s City Paper includes my “review” (of sorts) of the in-progress, workshop performance of El Camino - the play based on the lives and stories of Milton and Stephany Mejia (as detailed in the cover story a few weeks ago).

Let Them Eat Paste

Been a while since I did a proper round-up-date with published stuff. A list of links to things I’ve done for PASTE – pieces that are on their website, that is… Hopefully someone will find this a tiny bit interesting – it’ll definitely be useful for me…

PASTE MAGAZINE REVIEWS, FEATURES, ARTICLES, WHATEVES:

The list of top-100 songwriters includes my blurb on #96, Jimmy Cliff. Here’s a review of an album by Irish singer-songwriter Paddy Casey. This one’s a piece on the influence of Eastern European and Balkan music on a bunch’a rock bands ‘n’at, called Eastern Bloc Party. I’m sure this is linked here already, but, a review of Billy Bragg’s book. A piece on the influence of disco disguised as an obituary for the great Mel Cheren, which I think worked out nicely. A review of English folk-songstress Kate Rusby’s big album from a few years back. Definitely happy with this verbally-nasty review of the Grinderman album by Nick Cave & Co.  An oddly decent review of LCD Soundsystem’s NIKE album. Echo & the Bunnymen review. A big-ol’ review of a Citizen Cope album that I’d completely and utterly forgotten about. Here’s yet another link to my brief but important-to-me Rachel Unthank review. And finally, this dude Brett Dennen apparently made an album once.

Warhol Live in Carnegie Magazine

It’s a bit late, as the NEW issue of Carnegie Magazine is almost out, but here’s my piece on the WARHOL LIVE exhibit that’s currently showing at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

El Camino in City Paper

Boundless Love is a story about Milton Mejia – a young undocumented immigrant from Honduras living in Pittsburgh – his wife Stephany, and the new theater production being created in Pittsburgh about their harrowing times together as Milton was shuffled around the Byzantine immigration detention system. 

Milton’s journey – his camino - is a pretty amazing, if all-too-common, story, from a truly amazing young man. 

Fortuitously, the day this story hit the stands, the Obama administration announced a complete review and overhaul of the strange, wasteful, and inhuman system used to detain undocumented immigrants.

In a few days I’ll post up the original version of this story – it had to be cut severely because, well, because I write too damn long and there’s only so much space. So I’ll put that up for my personal satisfaction, and the three or four people who’d ever like to read it.

“Fountain of Youth” on Allegheny Front

My first radio piece – hooray! – from this week’s Allegheny Front environmental journalism program: A profile of 91-year-old naturalist (and mega-sweetheart) Esther Allen.

“Strike By Name” available now

Norman Strike, one of the many heroes of the 1984 UK Miners strike (and a good quotable chunk of my story on that subject from earlier this year, if you read that thang), has published his strike diary from 1984-85. 

From the beginnings of the labor action, through running battles like at Orgreave, to Strike’s multiple arrests and journeys around England with socialist soul-Oi band The Redskins, and the disastrous end to the strike, Norman was a part of one of Britain’s most cataclysmic historical events of the past 40 years. 

So, ya know, go to the Bookmarks Bookshop website and order a copy, son!