Here, this, now

I'm here for Amanda Gorman forever

Too bad the Foo Fighters are leading the race for Last Rock Band Everyone Has Heard Of

Having heavy Bay Area feelings as Larry Graham explains on @LowCutConnie’s Tough Cookies how he got his first bass at Music Unlimited in San Leandro - my home guitar shop for years

Ugh RIP to the great Gift of Gab, whose rhymes (and humor!) here still gobsmack me every time. A Bay legend. youtube.com/watch?v=WlOrx7…

Charlie Watts: Proof that knowing what not to play (and when not to play it) is greatness.

When I was a shitbag college music journo, Greg Saunier of Deerhoof told me Charlie Watts was a huge inspiration. I was surprised to hear such classic rock reverence. But Watts' style was truly timeless: agile, subtle, beautifully behind the beat.

The CA recall cost $300 million! Don’t people know you can almost buy a house in the Bay Area for that?

The SF Bay Guardian and SF Weekly, dead 7 years apart. Thanks to Joe Eskenazi for the no-bullshit eulogies. "Nothing beside remains," etc.

The best thing Pitchfork has ever published pitchfork.com/features/lists…

A good appreciation of Didion, who seems like the last of a now-extinct species — the midcentury megawriter. Her sentences changed me, maybe every writer, also the entire culture.

I wish more people talked about the brilliance of The White Album as an essay title — invoking the Beatles’ dissolution and loss of plot to indicate the same for Didion personally and for the world at large

This Sat 2/12 I'm talking virtually with Daniel Levin Becker about his [timely slang for high quality] new book, WHAT'S GOOD: Notes on Rap and Language (via City Lights Books). Come hang! bit.ly/3J5c2lA

For those who attend our WHAT'S GOOD celebration this Saturday with author Daniel Levin Becker & guest Ian S. Port, an exclusive treat when you order the book directly from us: A 'Side B' mix of songs explored in the book. Here's a little taste, created by the author: soundcloud.com/axaxaxasmlo/wh…

Really tickled by this essay in which Adam Gopnik takes a piece of WHAT'S GOOD and dilates it into a proper disquisition on the nature and baggage of rhyme.

Solid lil tremble here in Berkeley! #earthquake

The Jann Wenner thing is to me one more reminder that the entire mythology of Sixties music needs to be reconsidered and rewritten. We’re seeing just how bad and limited a worldview the existing canon came from.