January 2012
7 posts
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November 2011
1 post
Still Solving Riddles
For The Economist online, I talked with Björk. It was a blast! And I also learned a lot about science and songwriting.
Björk Guðmundsdóttir laughs, a lot. It’s the only time while talking she doesn’t sound like “Björk”, the pop star Alex Ross once called “the most famous Icelander since Leif Erickson.” Otherwise, Björk the interviewee trills in the same register as Björk...
August 2011
1 post
Translating Ai Weiwei
For The Economist, I wrote a story about Lee Ambrozy, who spent the last three years translating Ai Weiwei’s Chinese blog into an English language book.
After Lee Ambrozy moved to Beijing in 2004, she quickly grew accustomed to the spectacle that trailed Ai Weiwei wherever he went. The first time she saw the artist and activist in person, he was accompanied by five video cameras. Some...
An Interview with Mike Sacks
Last week, I rang one of my favorite writers, Mr. Mike Sacks.
It did not go well.
Listen to the audio here.
—ANDREW STOUT About | Journalisms | Tumblr | Twitter
July 2011
2 posts
Nerd Lib
For The Economist, I talked with Mr. Simon Pegg:
In less enlightened times, nerds were damned to the fringes of society. Their knowledge of triffids and wookiees was ignored, their habit of layering T-shirts over T-shirts mocked. But the nerds have risen up. Today they are recognised as an influential, moneyed elite. They build multi-billion dollar corporations from secret algorithms. They star...
Sorting Out Thurston Moore
Last summer, I was standing in line at a bookstore.
Okay, that’s not a promising start to a rock feature. I’m aware of this. It’s always best to begin these things with a bold declaration. Something like: “Mr. Big is back!” Though the problem with such pithy beginnings is they’re often false. Because Mr. Big is never coming back. Not to the pop charts, at...
Friends Without Benefits
For The Economist online, I wrote about Ralph Sassone’s debut novel, The Intimates:
By the time we get to know them they’re in their mid-20s: Maize is a reformed “college slut”; Robbie is a romantic idealist. She’s straight and he’s gay. She’s an unpublished writer, he’s an intern at a newspaper. New York is their oyster—picked clean. These are the...
The Voice
For The Village Voice online, I spoke with a longtime hero, Laetitia Sadier:
The voice is both plaintive and bright; beguiling and stark. It knocks around a quiet range of expression, yet it sings directly—of Marx, erotic transgression, and “the Dinosaur law.” And it might have cheekily soundtracked a Volkswagen commercial or two.
The voice belongs to Laetitia Sadier and after 20...
Michael Bay, Aphorist
“I can officially say I’ve probably thought more about robots on earth than anyone in the past year-and-a-half.”
“Every guy’s been in that circumstance by the pond or the lake, where the stud comes up to you and gives you shit.”
“I’ll take 30 kids into a screening room.”
“Death threats freak me up.”
“A lot of the older ladies, like 35, 40, they are like, ‘I didn’t want to come here. I didn’t...
June 2011
4 posts
Future Days
Yesterday, I spoke with Ryuichi Sakamoto about one my very favorite bands, Yellow Magic Orchestra. Thanks to the Internet’s own yellow magic, our conversation is already available for the trolls.
And for you, too.
Have you heard Yellow Magic Orchestra? They just might be the best pop group ever.
Now, if you’re the kind of reader who’s suspicious of such shameless hyperbole...
Lay It as It Plays
I wrote about John Darnielle and his fabulous Mountain Goats for SF Weekly:
“I’ll tell you a very funny story,” John Darnielle says. This is probably not the first funny story he’s told today. Nor will it be the last. Today is a publicity day for Darnielle. When it’s over, he will have talked to more than a dozen members of the music press. And tomorrow, he will...
I Was Born This Way
Lacking sentience.
With bits of afterbirth clinging to my skull.
A superstar.
—ANDREW STOUT About | Journalism | Tumblr | Twitter
'Nixon' in China, and Dubuque, Too
For The Atlantic online, I went behind the scenes at the Met Opera as they prepared to transmit John Adams’ Nixon in China to thousands of cinemas around the world:
On February 21, 1972, when Richard Nixon visited China, the technology used to beam the welcoming party around the planet and back to the United States was state-of-the-art. Nixon made sure of it. As the presidential plane,...
The Dark Art of Posthumous Music
In the latest SF Weekly, I write about the record industry’s morbid beginnings. And the new Michael Jackson album:
Money and death were on Thomas Edison’s mind in April 1878. Money, as usual, because Edison was the Gilded Age’s favorite boffin. And death, because he had just invented the phonograph. That spring, he explained his new gadget to the Washington Post as if it were the antidote...
Miranda July Talks
And I listen, for The Economist online. Special thanks to Roxanne for her time and help in preparing for this interview.
Ten years ago Miranda July was riding the L-Train through Chicago when she started thinking about a character she called “Richard”. She soon felt this character drawing her to the cusp of an entirely new emotional world, one more subtle than the wilfully strange...
May 2011
8 posts
1 tag
S.J. Perelman in Hollywood
Being away from the West Coast makes me think about the West Coast. And thinking about the West Coast reminds me of S.J. Perelman. Because no one was a worse audience for the polymer charms of Hollywood than the Brooklyn-born humorist.
Perelman arrived in Los Angeles, 1931, where he was hired to punch-up scripts for two Marx Brothers movies, Monkey Business and Horse Feathers. Thirty-two years...
Black Ice Cream
For The Village Voice’s Sound of the City blog, I spoke with Roberto Carlos Lange:
First there’s the owl; then there’s the enormous afro. The sight of the two in close proximity means you’ve likely entered Roberto Carlos Lange’s domain, whether it be through the front door of his Brooklyn home or by hearing one of the dozens of sound sculptures and animated films...
1 tag
Forty Years On
I have a good memory for dates. This isn’t something I often boast about, because it comes with a responsibility I’d rather not bear (namely, to act as the instigator and implicit master of all my social circle’s ceremonies). But there are times when being “temporally astute” adds a little charge to an otherwise idle moment.
Such as my walk home from coffee this...
Quiet Stars
For The Economist online, I wrote about Elenco Records, the quintessential bossa nova label:
One morning in 1961, Aloysio de Oliveira, an A&R representative at Philips Records, arrived at his office in Rio de Janeiro. As one of the prime movers behind bossa nova, his career had seen better days. Oliveira knew the sound he helped foster was fast losing momentum on the charts. For the...
2 tags
Vicky & Blue Boy
The first paycheck I received for something I’d written came from SF Weekly, a couple summers ago. Since then, I’ve benefitted enormously from the expert copyediting of Vicky Walker, who occasionally rewards me with an uproarious email, too.
You don’t know humility until you’ve spent an all-nighter slaving over 800 words, only to receive a dashed off thank you exuding more...
3 tags
"I always imagined Paul Simon was a gangly,... →
My BFF is very funny:
Growing up in a household that condemns television will do certain things to a person. For one, you end up reading. A lot. Two, the radio takes on superhero qualities. Three, you spend most of your childhood outdoors climbing through thick forests to make your way to the creek where you…
Read the entire post here.
ANDREW STOUT About | Journalism | Tumblr | Twitter
Original of the Species
I wrote about R. Stevie Moore for SF Weekly:
Leaning towers of discs seem to stalk R. Stevie Moore’s every move. At least, this is what we’ve gathered from the dozens of publicity shots that have promoted the homemade avant-pop albums he’s issued since the mid-1970s. Moore is the original of his own species: the bedroom rock star. The videophone we used to interview him gave us...
The Church of Julianna Barwick
For Interview magazine online, I spoke with Julianna Barwick. Tomorrow night, Julianna is home in Brooklyn, where she will play the Glasslands Gallery in celebration of Canta Luchuza, the extraordinary new album by Roberto Carlos Lange (otherwise know as Helado Negro):
Shortly after our early-morning talk with Julianna Barwick, she sent an album of photos our way. The pictures tell of a trip she...
April 2011
4 posts
Watt's World
A few weeks ago, while suffering an acute case of freelancer’s vapours (it happens!), I received a phone call from Mike Watt. We talked about his new album, Hieronymous Bosch, and The Wizard of Oz. Then everything was okay.
Here’s what happened:
When Mike Watt speaks, he screws his face upward, darts his eyes away, and raises his forearm to his brow, as if he’s about to close...
Sharon Van Etten Recommends the Red
For Interview, I spoke with Sharon Van Etten, who by absolutely no coincidence whatsoever is back home in Brooklyn tomorrow night to play The Music Hall of Williamsburg:
“If you want something a little funky, then try a Provence wine,” Sharon says, somewhere en route to Toronto. “Its flavor is very barnyard. But I don’t know — sometimes I just like a weird wine.”...
The Medium is the Medium
Today, the Library of Congress announced the addition of 3 Feet High and Rising, De La Soul’s debut, to the National Recording Registery. The 1989 album will share shelf space with Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man”, Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, Henri Mancini’s theme to Peter Gunn, and the Edison Orchestra’s 1908 recording of “Take Me...
Laura Tharp Writes About Stacey Levine's New Book
The book arrived on my doorstep amidst a particularly bleak spell of rain and cold and wind, just as winter seemed to be giving way to spring. The cherry blossoms, just arrived, shrugged beneath the weight of the rain and shook with the wind, resigning their newly opened buds prematurely. The sidewalks were filled with them, little pink clouds dancing in turbulent pools. I spent two days in my...
March 2011
4 posts
A Poem for Ōfunato
Huddled and cold, many so elderly, evacuees making their way The clasped hands of a woman scouring a newspaper’s names The tears of survivors greeting for the first time (First, the gratitude of life; then, the whispers of death)
A city: obliterated. Small universes: annihilated. Now, calm. Now, digging—not to rebuild but to bury the dead There, I saw a carpenter’s plane and...
Game Over, Old Sport
For The Economist online, I wrote about a video game adaptation of The Great Gatsby:
For children of the 1980s, the discovery last month of a seemingly long-lost video-game adaptation of The Great Gatsby evoked a few bygone pleasures. The grey 8-bit cartridge — familiar to classic Nintendo gamers worldwide — was said to have been found at a garage sale for 50 cents. An apparently...
My Friend Laura Lee Spoke With Ken Kalfus Last...
And here they are:
LAURA THARP: I recently re-read Infinite Jest and was again blown away. How did David Foster Wallace come to blurb your work?
KEN KALFUS: Wallace published some of my first short stories in The Sonora Review, the literary magazine of the University of Arizona at Tucson, in the 1980s. He was pursuing his MFA there, and he was the journal’s fiction editor. We exchanged...
A Little Night Music: Katy Goodman's La Sera
For Interview, I spoke with Katy Goodman, of Vivian Girls, about her extraordinary new album, La Sera:
Katy Goodman is singing to me. Though she’s at soundcheck in downtown Los Angeles with her primary band, Vivian Girls, she isn’t singing one of their songs. Nor is she testing a tune from her other band, La Sera, whose lush album of Brill Building-inspired songs has just come out....
February 2011
5 posts
Tea With Sidi
I wrote about Sidi Touré’s extraordinary new album, Sahel Folk, for The Economist online:
Say we’re old friends. I ask you over for tea and you bring a guitar. It’s a sunny morning, so we sip and strum outside, on the fire escape. Now imagine I am a celebrated singer from Mali, with a voice as exacting as a raconteur’s. You too are a virtuoso, practiced in both the...
The Black Dog
For The Economist online, I wrote about Rebecca Hunt’s deeply funny debut novel, Mr. Chartwell:
The black dog. Just where did Winston Churchill get his famous metaphor for depression? From Arthur Conan Doyle and his diabolical Baskerville hound? Or perhaps from Samuel Johnson, who in 1783 wrote, “when I rise my breakfast is solitary, the black dog waits to share it, from breakfast...
I Talk With Lindstrøm
For Interview Magazine online.
Hans-Peter Lindstrøm has a way of punctuating his sentences with a little laugh that keeps conversation floating above the room. So the effect of talking with the soft-spoken Norwegian for an extended period of time is not unlike the sweeping club epics he produces for his own Feedelity label. I’ve interviewed him twice now: The first time was in the summer...
I Spent the Weekend Searching
For an out-of-date translation of Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg’s beautiful short story, “The Mother.” I’m glad I did. Read more about it at The Economist online.
ANDREW STOUT About | Journalism | Tumblr | Twitter
Artist and Author Lauren Redniss Talks
with me for The Economist online.
Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout is Lauren’s extraordinary new book. I first wrote about it last month. Because I usually don’t wear my exuberance well, I’ll spare you my thoughts on the book today. Though I do hope you take a moment to seek out Lauren’s work.
From our Skype chat:
When did you first feel...
January 2011
6 posts
I Talk With Chaz Bundick of Toro y Moi
For Interview magazine online.
Toro y Moi’s second album is called Underneath the Pine and I’ve been listening to it daily for over a month. Chaz spent much of last year on the road. Judging by the new record, it seems he cozied up to lots of old European film scores and proto-disco records between gigs. Underneath the Pine is a funky and sonically fragile collection of songs. Which...
Situationist Comedy: Author Ken Knabb in San...
“Religion,” Ken Knabb wrote in 1978, “undoubtedly surpasses every other human activity in sheer quantity and variety of bullshit.” It’s Knabb’s own lack of, er, bunk that’s helped him rally would-be radicals around his area of expertise, a Paris-born, Marx-bred group of avant-gardists called the Situationist International. Tonight is your chance to catch...
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Pazz & Jop Ballot
The 37th Pazz and Jop critic’s poll published in this week’s Village Voice. Though I’m not a music critic, I am easily flattered. So here’s my ballot.
ANDREW STOUT About | Journalism | Tumblr | Twitter
Joanna Newsom Talks
And I listen — for The Economist online:
What was the most recent piece of music you listened to with your full attention?
The last time I was home, my record player had just been fixed, after months of being out of commission, so I spent a lot of time doing nothing but sitting and listening to music. I love my record collection so much at the moment! I feel a sort of weird pride about it, the...
A Postcard from the Future
My 2011 music predictions are in the latest SF Weekly. I cheated this year, phoning my tips in to San Francisco from some distant future. My findings include such bombshells as this 21st century-shaping fact:
Vampire Weekend became Vampire Monday when the indie rockers were forced to get day jobs after their Vampire Trust Funds ran out. The fallout was felt throughout Brooklyn’s indie-rock...
December 2010
1 post
Personal Stereos From a Dystopian Future
The assignment I turned in this morning continued a small tradition: my predictions for the coming year in music. This habit began in 2009 and was picked up again last January. My 2011 forecast will publish at SF Weekly in a few weeks. In the meantime, here’s a recap of my 2010 prognosis, which focused on new portable audio formats — and proved fairly inaccurate.
IF THERE’S ONE THING...