I Miss the Different Regional Cultures of America
As a child, growing up between Louisiana and Houston, I remember listening to the radio with my parents, and the DJs would often pepper their bits with this critical fact about the music we’d just heard: where they were from.
Boston’s own, Cars here with “Drive”
The sweetheart of Tennessee, Dolly Parton
More of that sound from Seattle with Nirvana
You just know in your heart that Journey were from San Francisco and ZZ Top from Houston. It was no surprise, either, to learn that Blondie was different, that she was from New York. Actually they were from New York. That urbane, icy cool of the Cars made you dream of a far-off place called Boston. Could the Go-Gos have come from anywhere but LA? Juice Newton, Kim Carnes, Kenny Rogers, Reba McEntire—each was recognizably from somewhere, but they were all like me, or like us, American.
But now music is made somewhere in Studio City, where half a dozen suits get together over macrobiotic, calorie-aware lunches to hash out kinder-Lolita-themed lyrics. It’s all the same and it’s regressed the beauty of my country’s artistic expression back to a dull, gray average.
To be clear, I’m sure Sabrina Carpenter is a lovely woman. And in this world, no shame on her being about getting her bag. Therefore I’ll be speaking of her commodified personality-as-product as “Sabrina Carpenter.”
As Rick Beato points out on his YouTube channel, the idea that “Sabrina Carpenter” is pushing the boundaries of propriety in her lyrics or album covers is ridiculous. Her hit songs are produced by a factory. Sure, she gets a writing credit too, but her songs are as mass-manufactured as Lunchables boxes.
"Sinners" the Movie and the Dreamed-of Tabletop RPG
There’s a movie that’s sat rent-free in my head for almost a year and half, and that’s pretty rare. It was Ryan Coogler’s film, “Sinners.” Two things have stuck with me about it.
- It’s a Black movie. There’s a whole culture not native to my own that Coogler shared with the world. It’s a culture removed by racial difference and also time to my experience. These are someone else’s grandparents' stories. And I’m so thankful to have learned more. But the film is also in conversation with some of the academic/literary learnings I have: Br’er Rabbit as an avatar of “Rabbit,” an African folk trickster known for his wiles; the power of haint blue; the food magic of gumbo.
- I remain convinced that the “Sinners” universe would be one of the best tabletop RPG (character sheets and funny dice) or card-and-token games ever.
Our friend Ryan wrote his own take on the film over at Signal Watch, worth a read alongside.
The Computer-Forward Cyberpunk Icons of Eurythmics
Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart on a train in 1986, Stewart working a Tandy 200.
Look at these cyberpunk heroes.
He’s collapsed after the time-tunnel brought them back to this era, reading one of these “books” that he learned about on his PersoComp in school. While here, in the 20th century, he’s going to read about an artist whose music he’d only ever heard as a snippet – for that’s all that remained after the drone wars. He’s mirrorshaded-out like a William Gibson assassin.
She remains focused on the mission and is using this century’s primitive PersoComp – in this era they call it a Tandy 200 – to determine details about their assassination. Coaxing data using BASIC, she’s determining likely conflict vectors.
The Tandy 200, ready for its close-up.
In all seriousness, Eurythmics (David Stewart and Annie Lennox) look like they could have taken this shot in 2026 instead of forty years prior. In Reagan/Thatcher 1986 she’s programming (prepping synthesizer notes/timings?) or taking notes while riding on a train.
There’s really not much else I can add to how awesome Eurythmics were and still are. Catching their videos (or Bowie’s or Prince’s) back then was like seeing a show at MoMa, Cooper-Hewitt, or the Whitney tunneled 50 years backward in time to early MTV. I wasn’t sure I liked it, sometimes it was a bit scary when the short-haired lady was gesturing with a riding crop, but I knew, even then, that it was art. Just listen to those adversarially timed hand-programmed synthesizers in some sort of technological dialectic with modernity itself at the opening of “Sweet Dreams.”