Michael Azerrad
Journalist at Freelance
Author of _The Amplified Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana_ and _Our Band Could Be Your Life_. Bylines: @NewYorker, @YaleReview and @NYTimes.
Articles
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1 week ago |
substack.com | Michael Azerrad
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published There are some great rock songs about record labels: Graham Parker and the Rumour's "Mercury Poisoning," “Rough Trade” by Stiff Little Fingers, and the Sex Pistols' "EMI." But those are all diss tracks. Even Nick Lowe's "I Love My Label" bears more than a whiff of sarcasm, and Soundgarden's "Sub Pop Rock City" is a piss-take. Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Workin' for MCA" is really neither here nor there.
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3 weeks ago |
substack.com | Michael Azerrad
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThis is a piece I did ca. 2008 for the late, great and short-lived music site Paper Thin Walls. The editor, the brilliant Christopher Weingarten, asked me to write a piece about Mission of Burma’s classic 1981 Signals, Calls and Marches EP for a regular feature they did called "Listening Party," which interviewed musicians about every song on one of their key records.
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1 month ago |
substack.com | Michael Azerrad
Recently, I watched a livestreamed conversation between Dirty Projectors' Dave Longstreth and Mount Eerie's Phil Elverum* on the occasion of the exquisite new Dirty Projectors album Song of the Earth. At one point, Phil asked Dave whether Song of the Earth's "Our Green Garden" features a little melodic allusion to Stephen Foster’s 1851 song "Old Folks at Home," better known as "Way Down Upon the Swanee River" — and I'm glad he asked, because I'd been wondering the same thing.
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1 month ago |
substack.com | Michael Azerrad
There's an almighty thrum, somewhere in the space between a hiss and a roar, throughout Tim Hecker's 2007 abstract electronic 20-minute mini-epic "Norberg." (It's not ambient music! You can and should actively listen to it!) That noise is awfully familiar — it's there in the ever-present urban whoosh of cars and planes and trains, and in the general electric hum that pervades our world.
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1 month ago |
substack.com | Michael Azerrad
Here's an outtake from The Amplified Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana (purchase link here), my newly annotated version of my 1993 Nirvana biography Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana. Here, the band is getting ready to record Nevermind at Sound City studios in May 1991. Original text in bold, annotation in roman. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Next, they went to a drum rental place and selected a brass snare for Dave.
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I just resurrected this piece I did ca. 2008 for the late, great music site Paper Thin Walls, edited by the brilliant @1000TimesYes. It's Mission of Burma guitarist Roger C. Miller's song-by-song take on their classic 1981 _Signals, Calls and Marches_ EP. https://t.co/aJ49WmTlbC
I've been a @FreedyJohnston fan since before the beginning. He's gearing up to record a new LP so he's playing new songs, faves from his deep catalogue & amazing covers on "Tuesday Night Live" every Tues. evening at 9 PM ET. Tonight: "the songs of 1972." https://t.co/jyzpAv2CiR
Was honored to do a "Desk Notes" for the great music site Line of Best Fit (@bestfitmusic). Find out the best rock novel ever written, what kind of monitors I use, check my Urban Dance Squad memorabilia and what that pile of Glenn Branca CDs is all about. https://t.co/CDFOljiXrl
