Articles
Secondhand Row
Inside Bedford's culture of bootlegs, used books and junk busts At some point during the gentle morning hours, between the time when Saturday night bar goers shuffle home to sleep and when the cafes open for Sunday brunch, Bedford Avenue between North 3rd and North 8th Streets makes a quiet transformation. Women and men, some dragging pushcarts, others driving station wagons, unfold card tables and spread brightly colored blankets onto the sidewalks. Handmade t-shirts and glass pipes are…
How to Ride a Wake
Or, the Arcade Fire puts the fun in Funeral. The short history of the Arcade Fire is fast being laid down in meteoric highs and dismal lows. During the year and a half since forming, the Montreal sextet has lived through the deaths of three family members, survived the dark chill of a Canadian winter, and worked crappy, on-the-black bakery jobs to cover expenses recording its debut LP, Funeral. So maybe it's to be expected when a scheduled interview from the road finds that they've traded…
The Late Blues Invasion
Fat Possum rescues a handful of bluesmen from obscurity. Imagine if, after the Beatles first hit it big in the States, the British Invasion hadn't followed them. In this bizarro world, the Rolling Stones are still popular back home—they've been playing scummy dives along the Mersey for 40 years—but they've never had a single hit in the U.S. The Who wrote a rock opera, but you've never heard it. A few years back, hoping to make some real money, they all signed to the same unknown record label,…
Falling Out
In light of Richard Clarke's new bombshells, two books also set their sights on Bush & Co. Call it an idée fixe. Richard Clarke does, in his exposé of President George W. Bush's wartime performance that hit shelves last week. It's an accusation that has been offered twice in three months by disgruntled officials of Bush's inner circle: The president makes his facts fit his conclusions instead of the other way round. Eric Alterman and New York politico Mark Green have released their behemoth…