rakemag I had to laugh at your article, “The Dog’s Lover” [July]. You see, I, too, have a similar problem with my male Yorkie. His toy, a poor stuffed animal, is now missing an ear, eye, and portions of his head, which I have had to stuff and sew numerous times. I made the mistake of … Read more
The summer is fading. The moon is easing down to sleep in the trees, even as the stars step back into the dark country of heaven. They look like a small cluster of island villages in the North Sea, seen from an airplane at night. A fox, interloper here in the middle of a city … Read more
Got Me a Movie, I Want You to Know: The Best Songs About Movies and the People Who Make Movies A bee got into my bonnet the other day, and I started thinking about my favorite songs about the movie industry. Not songs from movies—those are a different beast altogether. No, I want songs that … Read more
Twelve hours before the U.S. government issued a terror alert for its citizens in India, I stopped by the Fatima Burqa Collection shop in Mumbai (officially known as Bombay until 1996). Located on Ebrahim Rahmatulla Road, a teeming shopping street in a crowded downtown Muslim district, the diminutive outlet is distinguished from its neighbors by … Read more
Joan Jett, the tough-talking broad who once screeched “I don’t give a damn about my reputation,” has been canonized by an entire generation of she-rockers. Everyone from Courtney Love to PJ Harvey cites her as a muse. And while Jett’s career has recently detoured through acting gigs and reworking some of her standards for movie … Read more
As of late, Wendy Knox has been giving some thought to what a person might take with her if driven from her homeland. She and her Frank Theatre troupe are rehearsing their production of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, an epic set during the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-1648—a time when many Europeans … Read more
Mina Agossi was born to rankle a particularly fusty type of jazz listener. Her music is just so maddeningly … French. Edgy, cranky, wandering, and undeniably sexy, her vocal style owes more to PJ Harvey and Diamanda Galás than anyone from the jazz world. Agossi employs punkish backup musicians, utilizes unauthorized sounds (including the kamale … Read more
Three years after his last album, Guero, Beck gives us The Information, a spacey rap fantasy, and we’re relieved to report that our favorite trapped-in-puberty rocker is still one of the most devious sound manipulators in the business. Things were uncertain for a while: After the exceedingly mopey Sea Change and a notorious tour with … Read more
Long the greatest cover band in the indie-rock world, Yo La Tengo’s live repertoire (and much of its recorded catalog) includes an exhaustive list of wonderful songs by other people, ranging from the Fall and the Grateful Dead to John Lennon and Captain Beefheart. Of course, Ira Kaplan has proven to be abundantly capable of … Read more
VocalEssence, 120 singers strong, will join forces with the all-male singers of the boutique troupe Cantus to present an evening of folk songs, spirituals, and contemporary classical compositions, all handcrafted right here in the U.S.A. Included are works by Aaron Copland (“Ching-a-ring-chaw”) and Leonard Bernstein (“Make Our Garden Grow”) as well as relative unknowns. A … Read more