Music Features
The World of Captain Beefheart
Guitarist Gary Lucas and singer Nona Hendryx talk about their (2017) album The World of Captain Beefheart and the man behind the monicker.
Rocking Chair Blues
Howlin' Wolf's Rocking Chair -- a track-by-track appraisal of a blues classic (PopMatters)
Music Reviews
Bettye Lavette's "Things Have Changed"
Bettye Lavette's new collection of 12 Bob Dylan songs confirms her longstanding reputation as a great interpreter; her supremely soulful renditions make us hear them anew.
Ry Cooder's "The Prodigal Son"
Ry Cooder's first album in six years exchanges pointed political commentary for spiritual songs of comfort and consolation.
Book Reviews
The Original Blues
The Original Blues: The Emergence of the Blues in African American Vaudeville debunks popular notions about the origins of the blues.
Journalism
Serpico, Part II
Interview with filmmaker Antonino D'Ambrosio about his 2017 documentary, "Frank Serpico"
Face Forward and Forgetting
Rabih Alameddine (An Unnecessary Woman, The Hakawati) talks about his sixth novel, The Angel of History, and about the German-Jewish Marxist literary critic Walter Benjamin, the “othering” of Arabs in Western societies, and contemporary gay life.
Addio, Cosimo
Remembrance of the late Cosimo Matassa, who recorded many of the great R&B and rock 'n roll hits that defined the New Orleans Sound.
Film Criticism
Essay
Cultural Criticism and Reporting
"A Finook in the Crew"
"A Finook in the Crew: Vito Spatafore, The Sopranos, and the Queering of the Mafia Genre" (from The Essential Sopranos Reader
Nonfiction