Berfrois

Hip-Hop Heads: Jeff Alessandrelli Interviews Daniel Levin Becker

Hip-Hop Heads: Jeff Alessandrelli Interviews Daniel Levin Becker

I value fun and the sense that a rapper is enjoying their own skill rather than just telling me about it...

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Completely Claqueurs

Completely Claqueurs

Many people have claimed that the art of the claque was purely manual: what a paradox! Might as well say that the art of war is only the art of making sword-thrusts...

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People Look Like Emails by David Beer

People Look Like Emails by David Beer

In pandemic times I’m picturing Jason Fearn sat amongst his chaotic equipment, formulating a sinister and foreboding soundtrack...

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Francesco Tenaglia on Michael Jackson

Francesco Tenaglia on Michael Jackson

Screenshot from “Scream” video, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Epic Records, 1994 by Francesco Tenaglia It only lasts for a moment. Not a glutinous efflorescence, or a spooky appearance fit to star in choreography from the good ol’ days. The sluggish shadow slippers from one...

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Track 99

Track 99

Holding down the fast forward button on your CD player, eventually the sound of a mysterious hidden track would rush by. An all-too-quick blur of noise. Then you'd have to skip back a bit to get to the start of the song.

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Prince’s Beautiful One

Prince’s Beautiful One

On January 29, 2016, Prince summoned me to his home, Paisley Park, to tell me about a book he wanted to write. He was looking for a collaborator. Paisley Park is in Chanhassen

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Woodstock 50 Turned Off

Woodstock 50 Turned Off

A month before Woodstock 50 was announced, the festival was already in deep trouble...

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Upbeat Melodies

Upbeat Melodies

The Monkees were about as famous as you could get, with their More of the Monkees album beating out even the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for the number one U.S. slot in 1967.

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Setsuko Adachi: Flower Fires

Setsuko Adachi: Flower Fires

The audience sat in front of a screen heard ssssssssssssssssss in the darkness. Light flashed. A train appeared on the screen. The train was coming, increasing in size.

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Kick Out the Joy

Kick Out the Joy

The MC5 were never a famous band, merely a legendary one. The Clash wrote a song about their lead guitarist and ideologue, Wayne Kramer, called Jail Guitar Doors.

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Stevie Nicks has always had dreams that literally come true…

Stevie Nicks has always had dreams that literally come true…

Early in Stephen Davis’s workmanlike unauthorized biography of Stevie Nicks, we witness the circumstances of her most enduring creation’s birth.

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Anti-Corporate (B)urge(rs)

Anti-Corporate (B)urge(rs)

Readers with a historical knowledge of 1980s punk will have little difficulty seeing the value of Dave Dictor’s memoir, MDC: Memoir from a Damaged Civilization: Stories of Punk, Fear, and Redemption

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