From Salon.com
Disco does not suck. At least, as a genre it doesn’t suck, any more than rock n’ roll sucks, or jazz, or hip hop. Certainly, some of it, subjectively speaking, is awful. (I submit: the exquisitely bad “Disco Duck.” But I also submit: Chuck Berry’s “My Ding-A-Ling.”) But to lambast the whole shebang indicates a kind of fear, which we mammals often express as hostility. I see it as fear of gay folks, people of color, sexually confident women, and fear of being ridiculed, i.e. rejected on the dance floor; all fears unfounded, but potent, sad fears nonetheless. . . Read Essay
From The Rumpus
I’ve been wondering if R.E.M. purposefully scheduled their break-up announcement for autumn. I would not put it past them. Their deft use of symbolism was always one of their strong suits. Although they’d been discussing it for some time, they made it official as the natural world was dying gracefully around us. Leaves curl, darken and spiral down. The balmy air and long days of warm sunshine dissipate, shadows lengthen ever earlier, and R.E.M., a band most fans would place in the summer of their lives, is dead, going out as they came in 31 years ago: at one with the gods. . . Read Essay
