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One of my favorite books about music. Checks all the boxes for me.
Here's the official blurb:
SELLOUT: The Major Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (1994-2007)
The stories of 11 bands and their major label debut albums, including:
Green Day, Jawbreaker, Jimmy Eat World, Blink-182, At the Drive-In, The Donnas, Thursday, The Distillers, My Chemical Romance, Rise Against, Against Me!
Feb 2, 2024
Related Recs
Shameless self promotion alert -- my new book (published by the good folks at HoZac) is officially out on Friday and some of the advance press is now starting to land, which is fun to see. (You can order it here, if you're so inclined: https://hozacrecords.com/product/aifl/)
Our friends at Flood Magazine were among the first to write it up and decided to feature a book about EPs by.... posting a playlist of some of my/contributors' favorite songs from their favorite EPs. Sounds about right!
"His new book An Ideal for Living: A Celebration of the EP, both makes a case for the format’s legitimacy and backs that claim up with a fairly bulletproof top-25 EPs list for every decade dating back to the 1950s. From the Joy Division release referenced in the book’s title to the iconic Simon & Garfunkel collection depicted on the book’s cover and well beyond, duBrowa is intent on helping readers understand the value of these truncated tracklists as being much more than an afterthought in an artist’s oeuvre."
BONUS POINTS FOR THE USE OF THE WORD OEUVRE. :)
May 30, 2024
As a kid, Punk was everything to me. It was the anti-authoritarian lens through which I viewed everything. Even as I grew out of the music, the ideology still informed everything I did. As I got older and read more theory I started to view punk as infantile and puerile. A childish attempt at transgression. A baby spitting its dummy out.
A couple of years ago, a girl I was seeing gave me a copy of this book, and it rekindled my love for punk.
A sourfaced evisceration of the British state and the then-burgeoning tide of globalisation, this book is an Ode to Wally Hope, a man entrenched in the hippy moment who died as a result of his imprisonment in a mental institution. Through his activism and organising of free parties, Wally was much beloved and his death made of him a martyr for anarcho-punks everywhere. This book doesn't pull its punches and while some of what Rimbaud preaches seems like common knowledge today in the early eighties it would have been revolutionary. I can't recommend this, or the album it was published to accompany (Crass' Christ - the Album) enough.
It's short, if not so sweet, and my copy lives in my back pocket at all times.
Jan 17, 2024
Hey tyler hopefully this doesn’t violate some PI.FYI golden rule
But after nearly two years of writing, editing and arguing, my book about the EP is coming out in May and can be preordered here:
https://hozacrecords.com/product/aifl/
The book is about the origins, history and cultural impact of the EP since these little objects first started coming out in the 50s.
Over 50 of my music biz friends then helped me shape the list and review the top 200 ever released, according to us (ha).
For those of you who are into this kind of geekery/snobbery, I can’t wait to hear what you think. A labor of love, as all books are! ❤️
Mar 27, 2024
Top Recs from @theclack
The perfect lil snack for when you don’t want a big snack
Apr 3, 2024
Here it is, folks! Volume I of what could very well be a continuous project. Thank you so much to everyone that submitted - I smiled the entire time I was putting this together. It's best listened to with headphones ☺️
Liner Notes:
This collection of field recordings is a collaborative effort with users of PI.FYI, each of which recorded their own pieces. It features audio from all over the world and exhibits eclectic moments from London Underground commutes to cuckoo bird calls in Dhaka to the sounds of a century-old American diner.
Online communities like PI.FYI often represent a diverse set of people, places, and experiences, but together, the submissions form a living collage that highlights the commonalities of modern life - a unifying message for such a tumultuous time. The first track features all of the sounds played at once in an attempt to create an audio snapshot of an online community but in their offline lives.
The individual recordings are unedited except for minor gain and compression adjustments for consistency across the collection.
Mar 29, 2025
