Back in 2000, I was living in Baltimore and fronting a band called The Miss. We were invited to play in my hometown of Louisville at a birthday party for local musician and man about town, Chad Castetter. Being the Friday after Thanksgiving, it was a gala homecoming affair and, with about 300 in attendance, …
Category Archives: music
The Point of the Jesus Lizard
Once in a while you see an example of rock music that makes you realize exactly what that well-worn exercise is all about. The Jesus Lizard and David Yow were to me always the supreme exemplars of rock music: a tension between precise, simple musicality and raw unhingedness; the Apollonian and the Dionysian. On the …
Some Jon Cook Music
I didn’t make it to Louisville in time for Jon Cook’s memorial on March 9th, but I was in Louisville recently and I did extract some Jon Cook gems from my archives. The first two feature Jon’s collaborations with a couple of other recently- and tragically- departed Louisville musicians. “Unhindered Perception of the Happy Machine” …
Goodbye, Jon Cook
You can’t revisit your childhood, because it no longer exists, I told myself. — Thomas Bernhard, Extinction Jon Cook from Crain and Rodan, two of my favorite homegrown bands, was finally taken off life support tonight, ending two days of tortuous rumors and speculation. He was a bright spot in Louisville’s underground in the ’90s, …
Zombie Rock and the Duke of Hazard
What’s going on with hipster music? It’s an interesting question. About ten years ago I wanted to write a piece for my local weekly, Baltimore City Paper, on how the fuzzed-out, overdriven indie rock of my youth, largely springing from the AmRep and Touch & Go labels, had been replaced by another genre with the same …
Goodbye, Jason Noble
I knew Jason Noble was sick about two years ago, and I knew it was a nasty cancer, and I knew he’d beaten it for the moment. I didn’t know he was sick again so I was surprised this morning when a fellow refugee from Louisville told me that he’d passed. Jason, along with his musical …
On the Last Rock Star
On a hot August evening, the sun was setting over Barricata beach out on the Po Delta. The beach bar was deserted and the lifeguard-cum-barman started up his tractor and began to pick up the sunbeds. To do his work he put on the sound system and turned it up, loud. Sandwiched between the usual …
Evergreen
Note, September 26, 2025: Thanks to industrious Louisville underground archivists, we’ve got what is likely one of the first Britt shows on the YouTubes. A good amount of jams, some of Sean playing guitar, and three songs which were later recorded — Plastic Bag, Remembering the Queen and Beat. A rowdy summer party on the …
Thanksgiving Day post
You may be thinking of Ben Franklin as you dig into your turkey. Recall — as a graffito artist in my neighborhood apparently has — that the founding father also noted, as many a revolutionary did, that “they that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” …
DomeniCa
Not a lot makes me miss DC. But these Fugazi videos did, even though they’re not shot in the District. Even those who might find the band overly serious or self-righteous still should appreciate the incredible energy of the band and of Guy Picciotto in particular. He calmed down from putting himself through basketball hoops …