Weekly Reader
- I’ve never been a big fan of John Updike, but anytime we lose a big literary figure like him it is probably worth taking another look. The Guardian offer their view on the essential works of Updike.
- Conversational Reading has been publishing a series of interviews about publishing during a recession. One of my favorite presses, New Directions, was recently asked to contribute.
- I’m not a huge fan of the band Half Off, but I have always thought their vocalist Billy Rubin had a lot of interesting things to say. My friends at Double Cross recently had him write about his time in Half Off. Hopefully he will write about Haywire, his band after Half Off, soon.
Half Off never had an issue with straight edge. I was straight edge (and I suppose I still am). We had an issue with people that were turning straight edge into a fashion statement or a club/gang. It was disturbing to see something so important being turned into a commodity. That commodity was being used as a wedge to exclude people from the punk/hardcore scene rather than embrace the diversity fostered by the DIY attitude that had made punk rock a force to be reckoned with. It seemed to me that the straight ege thing to do was embrace the people with drug/alcohol problems (not attack them). The other thing that became prevalent in the scene was the “tough guy” image that went along with being “hard”. I still don’t know what that means outside of a description of a penis.
This week’s video is of the excellent band Saccharine Trust. I am a big fan of their first album, Pagan Icons. It is a great combination of early hardcore, rock, and some of the free jazz influence a lot of bands on SST Records had at the time. Here they are playing at the University Of Connecticut in 1984 (with Black Flag by the way):
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