The mists of time are very foggy on this one. I am fairly certain that my introduction to the Breeders came via Tanya Donelly. Somewhere in the early ’90s, I became aware — I couldn’t say how — that in … Continue reading →

I can’t honestly remember how I first heard that Billy Bragg and Wilco were going to be teaming up for an album of a bunch of unrecorded Woody Guthrie songs. I do remember my reaction, which was that it was … Continue reading →

It was a long time ago, but not all that long, and I was sitting having lunch at Dojo’s, the venerable Japanese-inflected diner in Greenwich Village. I was almost certainly having the soy burger dinner (avocado on the side, burger topped … Continue reading →

For some bands, I vividly recall the moment they emerged into my consciousness, stamped across my memory like a signpost noting, “Beyond here, everything changes.” For others, isolating how I discovered them is more of a forensic exercise. I’m pretty … Continue reading →

A brief history of my Jon Langford fandom, in four live shows: February 1998: I’d been a fan of Langford since first discovering him as the singer/guitarist/court jester/non-hierarchical non-leader of the Mekons almost a decade earlier, and had learned to expect him … Continue reading →