…and it might’ve been the greatest music weekend I’ve ever had. Feeling a little underwhelmed by the 2024 ACL Fest lineup (no offense — I still went Friday), I accidentally built my own 3-city fester the weekend before when the stars magically aligned. How’d it come to be? Bought tickets to the epic Friday night…
Search Results for: benji hughes
Benji Hughes, Agatha Christie, Anne Rice, Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen King, Cory Doctorow, David Foster Wallace, Kurt Vonnegut…and me!
One goal I had for L Extreme was to capture the genre crossing styles Benji Hughes uses on A Love Extreme the album through the various song/chapters. Recently I remembered this old I Write Like text analysis website and wondered how well I did at mixing things up. Let’s see… In 15 chapters, I write like Agatha…
I Went With Some Friends to See Benji Hughes…
…it was the greatest show I ever saw. I’ve been dying to see Benji Hughes live since discovering him back in October via an article in The Believer magazine that sat unread on our coffee table for several weeks. By the time I got around to reading it and listening to his album I learned…
All About The Benji Hughes
Every once in a great while a record comes around that just plain blows your mind. One that lands in heavy rotation, building up steam and momentum with each listen. You may like or even love other albums, but the magical ones like this are few and far between. Music so good you can’t stop…
LBDG Commentary 16: New Age
I almost called this chapter “Fourth Time Around” but I’ve never liked when an album has the same title as a song on it. (Yes, I already sort of did this earlier…) “New Age” is fine, but I considered it a placeholder of a scene title until I was agonizing over where to set the…
LBDG Commentary 14: Devotional Deviations
Making Local Boy Done Gone a standalone sequel meant telling a self-contained story, but also allowing it serve as either book one or book two depending on your reading order. (Or the other book two, but I’m getting ahead of myself much like Local Boy often does.) Part of that involved the Back to the…
LBDG Commentary 12: The New Abnormal
The title of this chapter comes from the 2020 album by The Strokes, featuring cover art by 27 Club member Jean-Michel Basquiat. Here it represents Local Boy’s reluctant return to (ab)normal life after losing time after his adventures with the redhead. It’s also the term I used to describe COVID lockdown, apparently inspired by this…
Still Right Here With You: 8 Shows with The Pink Stones at SXSW 2024
I’m known to engage in some unreasonable live music fandom from time to time. Following 311 on summer tours in high school and college on the MA-RI-CT-NY-NJ circuit in various orders. Flying to London for the “last ever” Carter USM show…twice (2007 & 2014). All four nights of the epic July 2010 Benji Hughes residency…
Yoshimi Battles a Hazy Memory
Saw a stellar Flaming Lips concert this week, reminding me why Benji Hughes calls them the greatest show he ever saw. They played Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots in its entirety, followed by a full second set with all of the usual delightful hjinx throughout. If memory serves this was my 5th Flaming Lips show…
Remixing Heartman & Songstress
L Extreme plays out in album order as a track-by-track adaptation of A Love Extreme, but ironically following the song sequence generated a non-sequential narrative that loops back on itself in a series of flashbacks. Keeping score at home? Excluding framing devices, re-arranging the chapters into chronological story would be along the lines of: 21, 3, 8,…