These guys are so historic that they should play in a natural history museum. Before electronica, techno, house music, Skrillex and Mija, the Pet Shop Boys, Moby, the Flock of Seagulls, OMD, Gary Numan and even Kraftwerk, there was Tangerine Dream, making electronic music with analog synths, big-ass sequencing machines and various reverb boxes, all sans drummer. A bit more beat-centric these days (probably a good thing), Tangerine Dream overall has remarkably changed little in the last 50 years, a pristine specimen from the heady days of 1970s progressive rock music. You stillcan not dance to Tangerine Dream, but you can most certainly still space out to them. Click to Read More...

The legend of John Henry has been passed down now, for centuries. But what is he well known for? And did he ever exist? The more you look, the more he disappears behind his own legend. His is a tale of man against machine. The man wins, but even though he is the mightiest of men, dies. The machine, slower than the man, will nonetheless just keep chugging away. The descendants of that steam drill will finish the tunnel, then finish a much larger tunnel, rendering the one that killed John Henry obsolete. Click to Read More...

In general it is highly inadvisable to roll up on the private property in West Virginia without prior approval (obtained usually by phone), especially for a place as nestled deeply in the Appalachian Mountains as this farmhouse, affectionately named the Farnham Colossi. But they disconnected their phone and no longer answer the door when strangers call, maybe tired from the endless requests to wander the grounds, and admire their collection of gigantic fiber-glass figures, and other strange bits of commercial flotsam. Click to Read More...

The guitar slinger informed his audience that there were only two genders, and that anything else was "bullshit." He then commented that he once dressed up as a Viking one Halloween, but he did not go around identifying as a Viking. I dunno though. After all these years, Nugent still reads pretty heavily as a Viking. If Nug were to self-identify as Viking, I am pretty sure no one would object. In fact, his viking tendencies have done him fairly well in life, I would say. Click to Read More...

While primarily the Barbie movie is about Barbie's epic journey to the real world to maintain her perfect beauty (free from even a single cellulite), the funniest part was Ken trying to make it all about himself, which is something guys always do. It is funny because Ken is not only useless in that vaguely existential way that all dudes are in this post-industrial era but literally because Ken has always only been an accessory in the universe of Barbie. Speaking of accessories, check out this awesome retro Barbie hat case, which my friend Adele rocked at the Baltimore premier of Barbie. Click to Read More...

Bands come into the world kicking and screaming and from this they must learn to communicate with the rest of us. I remember seeing the Bushwick band Dead T00th several years back when the then-still toothy Zach the Silver Spaceman, so affable offstage, would jolt and contort such when playing his songs, it was as if he - or something else - were trying to break out from his body. Now, the band all aspire, in unison no less, to this frenzied rock n roll, and results can be glorious, as I witnessed at the first-ever Rogue Festival, at the Sultan Room, Bushwick NYC... Click to Read More...

To be honest, I did not have high expectations of this show. I had seen the Dead & Co the year prior, almost to the day, at this venue, and was underwhelmed by the blatant commerciality of it all. This show, however, came as a nice surprise, a great way to end the run for this band, for the Grateful Dead, and maybe even rock n roll itself. It was an evening of endings, but also, strangely enough, of new beginnings. Click to Read More...

Iron came from the Gods. A meteorite -- a knocked-off husk of iron and nickel from a comet or asteroid that hit the earth atmosphere a bit too hard -- flamed to the ground, providing a source of iron that Eskimo locals used to create tools and weapons for generations to come. Even for centuries after, though, it did not occur to anyone that you could actually dig up more iron from the ground. Click to Read More...

Before Burning Man, there was the Grateful Dead parking lot scene. The show was usually at night but we would still try to get there as early in the morning as possible, for a full day of hanging out and partying. Here are the photos from one such show, March 17, 1991, at the Capital Centre, outside Washington D.C. Click to Read More...

Sometime ago, somehow,, we were implicitly taught that capitalism would solve all our problems, that we could rely on the free market economy to supply whatever we need. Personal responsibility is not required as long as you kept your checkbook open. But I am driving down the road with a bag of Taco Bell grub and I am eating a taco but I am not tasting the taco at all. Like there is nothing appealing about this food whatsoever, but I was hungry and I had money, and Taco Bell could sell me a bag of food. Taste, or even nutrition, has little to do with it. I am eating capitalism. The message of naturalist Wendell Berry, collected in his lifelong book essays, is that this trust in capitalism has led us astray, estranged from the land that is our collective home. Click to Read More...

It was those who were the most ruthless, with the least scruples, who survived the German concentration camps of World War II. Others gave up, sunk into apathy, and slid into disrepair and inevitable death. Those who chose to find meaning -- any meaning -- found will to go on day-by-day. Suffering is inevitable. It is how you choose to respond to external hardships that make you who you are, argued Viktor Frankl, in his account of being a WWII prisoner in Auschwitz. Click to Read More...