Tag Archives: Biography

Understanding Napster is essential to a grasp of how we got where we are now with P2P, the hysterical flapping of the music industry, and the various possible entertainment-delivery futures. We ran an excerpt from Joseph Menn’s All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning’s Napster from the …

The truth be known I am emotional and pretty damned squeamish, so when it comes to aspects of life that touch heavily on both – like war – I try pretty hard to concentrate on the macro view and not get too caught up in the micro, where it ALL …

Nice overview of Napster history – did it really happen? – in LA Times excerpt from new book All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning’s Napster by Joseph Menn: It all began with a poor Boston-area kid who came west to Silicon Valley and started a revolution. …

Jandek is a mysterious Houston “recording artist” who has been self-releasing albums since 1978. Some call him a genius, many more call him a psychically dyslexic agoraphobic with no discernable musical talent beyond an uncanny ability to irritate. Demonstrating that not all radio is geared toward the masses, Harvard’s WHRB …

For a guy few outside of the British Navy know much about, Samuel Pepys is getting a lot of play these days. He is the subject of a new biography by Claire Tomalin, reviewed last week in the NY Times, and his daily diaries have been turned into a blog …

Long New Yorker essay on Ellsberg and his new book on the Pentagon Papers: To anyone over a certain age (forty-five?), Daniel Ellsberg needs no introduction, but it would be quite a challenge to explain Ellsberg to someone who had never heard of him. There was this brilliant young man …

PW Daily on the lavish new Stones memoir: Bill Wyman has been a great pack rat. In some 40 years touring with the Rolling Stones, he amassed a treasure trove of material, including rare photographs, tour posters and ticket stubs, letters and telegrams. These objects–combined with his surprisingly crystal-clear recollections …

The Observer has an ongoing series on Kurt Cobain’s diaries, including images of the actual journals, and Barney Hoskyns’ essay on his importance: “There’s something wrong with that boy…” noted William Burroughs when, in 1993, Kurt Cobain dropped in to pay his respects in Lawrence, Kansas. ‘He frowns for no …

Lyricist of classic Broadway and Hollywood musicals.

Last night Dawn and I went to a Halloween party – she was Courtney Love and I was Kurt Cobain. No one recognized us – they just thought she was a whore and I was Jeff Spicoli. How soon they forget. We are once again in tune with the zeitgeist: …