Alec Hanley Bemis

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Blood Rush

Alec Hanley Bemis
No one has placed Coldplay at the forefront of 2002‘s ”rock renaissance“ yet, so let’s be the first. Yeah, sure, they sound more like a fey British import than a rough-and-tumble rock band. Yeah, they‘ll sell more records than the Strokes, the White Stripes, etc. (Most of the new rock......
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Boys Are for Noise

Alec Hanley Bemis
There is horrible noise, and then there is horrible noise you can legitimately say you enjoy. To understand the distinction, see Lightning Bolt play live. Heirs to an avant-shock lineage that includes Zurich Dada, the Germs, Brian Eno‘s No New York comp, John Zorn’s Naked City, and the Boredoms, they......

Paul Williams, Subjective Artist

Alec Hanley Bemis
Photo by Anne Fishbein Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. --William James, The......

Richard Meltzer, Noise Boy

Alec Hanley Bemis
Photo by S. Hason Without music, life would be a mistake. --Friedrich Nietzsche RICHARD MELTZER IS ONE OF THE best rock writers there ever was. He lives in Portland. He moved there from Los Angeles in 1995. It's cloudy most of the time. "Gray is the color the sky should......

Maybe

Alec Hanley Bemis
HEY, BUDDY, FIND ME A CRITIC WHO CARES! I've been considering the role of criticism in the era of the Internet, the entertainment conglomerate, the niche market. By and large, culture is now pop culture, but it's impossible to pretend that it's still a shared experience. Rather, culture is the......
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Dreaming, Grieving, Making Music

Alec Hanley Bemis
Images of the wreckage. New Age music‘s peaceful thrum. Pathos builds. Cue voice-over: ”In the wake of 911 . . .“ You throw your Percocet and whiskey bottle at the television set. If you hear another commentator begin a piece with that thought, you will scream. But: Two new records,......
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Up a Creek

Alec Hanley Bemis
We want things to fit, like square pegs in square holes. But there are no square holes. There are stones in shoes, bumps in roads, clouds in skies. It rains and pours, and each drop triggers a drum, a fretless bass, a guitar hero, a fiddle, a tuba, a brass......

Fanboys and Cheesecake

Alec Hanley Bemis
TITS AND ASS. THAT IS THE DOMINANT IMPRESSION one takes away from the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the world's largest showcase for interactive entertainment. Amid the gunshots and explosions, the fuzzy cartoon characters making hydraulic leaps and bonking each other's heads, the roar of virtual football players and virtual engines, the......
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Golden Handcuffs

Alec Hanley Bemis
I pick up the Sunday paper from my doorstep. A circular for Office Max falls out. On the front is a picture of a black man holding a cell phone in one hand, newspaper stock tables in the other, his mouth agape in a toothy smile. He‘s wearing a white......
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Cool Schmool

Alec Hanley Bemis
N*E*R*D In Search of . . . (Virgin Records) I've had friends who feel the urge to drive SUVs within the confines of Los Angeles. They wear designer blue jeans, enjoy the occasional lap dance and snort cocaine, preferably between midnight and 4 a.m. and within spitting distance of the......