Michael Azerrad

New York

Author of _The Amplified Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana_ and _Our Band Could Be Your Life_. Bylines: @NewYorker, @YaleReview and @NYTimes.

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Articles

Deerhoof: There's Nothing More Punk than Doing It Yourself

2 days ago | substack.com | Michael Azerrad

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWhen things get so big, I don't trust them at allYou want some control — you've got to keep it small— Peter Gabriel, "DIY" (1978)Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published One sultry summer night on her street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Deerhoof’s singer-bassist Satomi Matsuzaki took out her cellphone and took a photo of a truck that had a lot of lights on it.
Sly Stone and the Unbearable Zeitgeist of Being

1 week ago | substack.com | Michael Azerrad

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published "Being an artist meant more than just traveling through events," wrote Sly Stone in his 2023 memoir, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). "It meant channeling them." One of Stone's many gifts was that he actually had the sensitivity and artistry to do that, to assimilate the spirit of the age and express it as music.
Skip James Is So Glad

2 weeks ago | substack.com | Michael Azerrad

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Mr. Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James hailed from Bentonia, Mississippi (you know the place — it's about 16 miles south of Yazoo City on US-49), and played a particularly dark strain of the blues, which is really saying something.
The Miles Davis Quintet Live '67: A State of Grace

1 month ago | substack.com | Michael Azerrad

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published In 1967, Miles Davis had one of the greatest bands ever, in any genre: saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams. "All-stars" is not nearly the word — those four gentlemen soon turned out to be a veritable Mt. Rushmore of modern jazz.
Dickie Goodman, Goofball Pioneer of Postmodernism

1 month ago | substack.com | Michael Azerrad

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Imagine a single that sampled Drake, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, and Lady Gaga — without permission — and then hit #3 on the Billboard charts, selling more than a million copies. That's right, you're imagining the mother of all lawsuits. But you're also imagining something that pretty much already happened — in 1956. Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Noël Plays Vegas - And Absolutely Kills It

1 month ago | substack.com | Michael Azerrad

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedText within this block will maintain its original spacing when published There are few images more iconic than the cover photo of 1955's Noël Coward at Las Vegas: the lone gentleman impeccably turned out in evening clothes and black tie, elegantly toting a teacup amidst a lunar expanse of Nevada desert. He is literally, as his most famous song put it, an Englishman in the midday sun.
"Be Stiff": Devo's Accidental Anthem

1 month 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.
Doing Everything Wrong: Mission of Burma's Signals, Calls and Marches

2 months 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.
A Looney Tune Shines from a Dirty Projector

2 months 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.
Tim Hecker Brings the Noise to Norberg

2 months 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.