Few writers have managed to pin the millennial male ego under glass the way Nick Hornby has. In his comic novels High Fidelity, About a Boy, and the new Juliet, Naked, among others, Hornby picks apart our vanity and insecurity in ways that are as scary as they are entertaining. He’s also written loads of great nonfiction about his love of soccer, literature, and pop music. Like High Fidelity, probably his best-known book, Juliet,…
All by myself, almost: Marah’s Dave Bielanko soldiers on with a “folk-trio” version of his band. Double-aught eight hasn’t been particularly easy on any of us, but Dave Bielanko — frontman of Marah, the Brooklyn-by-way-of-North Philly true believers who were praying at the Stations of The Boss back when The Hold Steady were in, well, Lifter Puller — has had a particularly rough year. In January, Marah released Angels of Destruction!, their seventh full-length…
>> The 1900s are playing the Rock and Roll Hotel, not to be confused with the 1990s. Three Stars alum Shortstack will join them on the bill, along with The Dead Trees and Kitty Hawk. $10, 8:30 p.m. >> Tonight at Blues Alley one of the area’s finest jazz drummers, Nasar Abadey, takes the stage with SuperNova, featuring Allyn Johnson on piano, Gary Thomas, Jazz Studies Chair at Peabody, altoist Joe Ford, and bassist…
Walking into Jammin’ Java Friday night, here’s what I knew about Philly rockers Marah: 1) High Fidelity and About a Boy author Nick Hornby, a man who has documented his musical preferences at least enough for me to know I largely share them, loves on this band so much he devoted one of his book columns in Believer magazine a couple of years ago to their largely unsung magnificence. 1a) Stephen King –Josh Ritter…
One rule of writing is that your best material tends to come from your experiences. If this isn’t true about Dominic Cicere’s Near Wild Heaven, then he’s damn good at faking it. Cicere’s book — which contains a collection of poems, a short story and a screenplay — provides some wonderful flashes of the sort of affection that exists between a writer and what they know, especially in the short story “Split Decision,” in which…
Congratulations, Alyssa R.! Your thoughtful commentary on this week’s Decemberists show won you the gatefold vinyl copy of The Crane Wife and a special, limited edition lithograph signed by the band! We were particularly fond of Alyssa’s social and political observations as they related to the show. Here’s what she had to say: A couple of thoughts: 1)The material from “The Crane Wife” rocks a lot harder on stage than it does on the album,…
MONDAY What a weekend of basketball! It’s going to be hard to come down from over the next few days, so step off gradually. Go check out Tom Graham and Rachel Graham Cody as they discuss Getting Open: The Unknown Story of Bill Garrett and the Integration of College Basketball. It’ll help to augment your game IQ, which may be feeling a little shattered after all your Big 10 picks got spanked. Barnes & Noble,…
And the winners have been revealed on washingtonpost.com’s Best Blog contest for political and election blogs. The contest, which took nominations starting a couple of months ago, had readers decide which blogs were the cream of the crop in topics such as “Most Likely to Last Beyond Election Day,” “Best Rant” and “Best Inside the Beltway.” National Review’s The Corner blog won in several categories; in fact, conservative blogs by and large dominated the entire…