Kill Yr Idols
Newsletter (Digital)
Kill Yr Idols is an irreverent, iconoclastic, and even insolent look at American culture. Everything we hear, see, and read is inside the world of fucked up bullshit—and that was even before the pandemic meant we can’t hear and see things together anymore. How we got here has a lot to do with the institutions—political, or course, but also artistic and supposedly public-serving—and even the people we’re supposed to admire.
Music, art, books, movies, all the rest, matter to us, all of us—they matter even to those who don’t pay attention to each one. Why are you supposed to pay attention to this, and not that? Institutions, people, and their editorial supporters are like your parents making decisions for you, and like the poet said, “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.”
We should all be angry. We should all Kill Yr Idols Source
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| Scope | National |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Country | United States of America |
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Recent Articles
Search ArticlesOn Acquiring My First Rolling Stones Albums
This is the year I bought my first Rolling Stones albums, copies of Tattoo You and Let it Bleed I had been eyeing, awaiting bargains to appear (still have Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street, and Some Girls on my list, and I have a strong hunch there’s going to be a repackaged set of the last next year when the album turns fifty). I’m not sure if that makes me a dinosaur, a hipster? Somehow ahead of my times, catching a new wave?
All These Are The Days My Friends
Watermill I’m sitting on a plain wooden bench, just a plank parallel to the ground, with a perpendicular slab of wood supporting my back. It’s simple and eloquent and purposeful, like a Shaker design remade by a Memphis designer. It’s on the grounds of Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center on Long Island, and if it wasn’t designed by Wilson himself, it is an expression of his most fundamental values. I’m sipping two fingers of bourbon out of a plastic cup.
It's Not You, It's Me
“I first became aware of it…” Yes, there’s been a few weeks without anything new here. I have been writing, there’s been a coupleconcert reviews, and I’ve had a couple things Bandcamp published (you may enjoy this guide to the great Mal Waldron), and there’s always the stuff that no one on the outside sees, like brainstorming and crafting new freelance pitches every week. That’s all still a lot of words. But none here.
Taking it to the Streets
We all have a giant dichotomies, our either-this-or-that, about things we care about. I mean, there is so much stuff out there, just to preserve our sanity and make satisfying use of our time1 we have to make decisions.
Talk, Talk, Talk, it's Only Talk
You are invited to the above glorious event On May 27th, I appeared on the Brooklyn Rail’s New Social Environment discussion series, talking about minimalist music and my Minimalist Music book with Adam Shatz, the US editor of the London Review of Books, an author who’s working on a book about creative Black music (which I’m exceedingly interested in), and an excellent critic.
Miles Davis at 100
At the vanguard of the century When I was in college, I took two history courses with a professor who was easily the most politically conservative (in the mid-20th century American establishment manner) person on the entire campus: Modern European History and the History of Espionage and Diplomacy.
Jazz: The Mid-Year Report
So much good music in so little time I gotchoo We’re on the cusp of Memorial Day weekend, and I’ll be sending out another newsletter just after that celebrating the birthday of one of the titans of the recorded music era, so a shorter one today.
Bands of Our Lives: The Philip Glass Ensemble
There are words that on their face are different combinations of letters and seem to mean totally different things. Meanings, though, can not only overlap but express the exact same thing, the only difference is between who is thinking and saying them. What are, really, the differences between a “band” and an “ensemble,” and a “cover” and “interpretation?” The Philip Glass Ensemble sits in the nexus of these questions.
The Great Illuminator
While I can’t remember the very first time I heard Keith Jarrett’s playing, it was probably on the Miles Davis at Fillmore LP. The first time I remember listening to his playing was one summer when I was in high school and attending an Eastman School of Music jazz camp. In a break between some lesson and another class, I went to the music library and pulled out Belonging and sat down with it on the turntable.
"It's Here, Lads"
First, a word from my manager, Ian Faith: Today is the day that Minimalist Music is out for anyone to buy or borrow and read, and I encourage you all to do so! It’s a concise and original look at one of the most important changes in Western music, one that is sill alive and developing around us. Distilled from the back cover copy: Minimalism is not what you think. As a genre, it’s not harmonies, kinds of rhythms, styles and flavors. It’s not about less, about minimal materials.