L Extreme is billed as a novelization of the album A Love Extreme by Benji Hughes, though it actually pulls from his entire catalog through early 2021. January 31, 2025 marked the release of three new Benji Hughes jams via the soundtrack to the film Home Free. Since I spent years mapping out how to…
Tag: Benji Hughes
I Went With Some Friends to See Dinosaur Jr., The Flaming Lips, Weezer, Jon Lindsay, Benji Hughes, and Soul Coughing…
…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…
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,…
LX Origin Story, Part I
Before I dive into chapter by chapter, song by song commentary for L Extreme I wanted to provide a little background on how this came to be. Let’s start at the beginning… July 2009: I purchased the special music issue of The Believer magazine at Skylight Books in LA. It was a total impulse purchase…
New Novel: L Extreme
It’s been awhile but we’re back with style… Announcing the new novel by JL Civi: L Extreme! Readers of this blog know I’ve been a huge fan of Benji Hughes for years. Somewhere along the line I decided to write a novel based on his album A Love Extreme. For a reason I can’t fully recall…
Of the Year – 2016
ALBUMS 1. I Had a Dream That You Were Mine — Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam I love when my favorite album of the year comes out of nowhere. I listened to this on NPR first listen because I liked the title and Hamilton’s last name. And I pretty much haven’t stopped listening to it since….
Someone Else is Rediscovering Pavement
The best love letter to a band disguised as a letter to your past self (or is it vice versa?) that I have ever read: Wait, You’ve Never Heard: Pavement — Brighten The Corners My favorite quote: “There’s a magic to the moment you finally love a band, and anyone who says he or she was with…
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…