Warren Ellis, who promoted the show before it even premiered and then soured on it, called last week’s episode (“The Option Period”) the best so far. And it was good — better than the two-part “Nevada Day” that came immediately before, which stretched out the Tom-Gets-Arrested plot too slowly. It was great that Jordan McDeere [...]
A Hardcore Christmas
[This is part of The John M. Higgins Memorial Xmasganza.] My entire musical aesthetic is built on three legs: 1) punk/post-punk, 2) hip-hop and 3) R&B/soul/funk. For John, his foundation was punk music. We never really discussed his early days of music fandom, but in all the time I’ve known him, his tastes ran harder [...]
The John M. Higgins Memorial Xmasganza
Well, I hope you’re not sick of hearing about the late John McLaughlin Higgins, because I’m going to keep talking about him. He was important to me and important to this blog. Mostly, he was important to me. As I post this, it’s been exactly one week since I heard that he had died. Every [...]
Higgins: On the media and in it
More coverage and tributes on the occasion of the death of John Higgins. Goodbye to a friend (Higgins lived in Hoboken all of his time in the New York area and he was a supporter of the Hoboken411 blog.) Remainders: Kramer’s Newest 15 Minutes Are Almost Up (He would have loved making an appearance on [...]
Another classic tale…
I’ve already written about my friend John, but I’ve got one more classic Higgins story to relate. In May of 1994, we attended a trade show in New Orleans. We wanted catch some music (we saw Elvis Costello, in town supporting the Brutal Youth album) and were excited to see that psychobilly legend Reverend Horton [...]
My best friend died today…
His name is John M. Higgins. It was a sudden heart attack. He died at the hospital early this morning. He was 45 years old. I met John in 1990 at a trade conference. We were both working; he was a trade reporter and I was working the press room. My wife introduced him as [...]
Give me a break
You’re either going to love or hate these offerings. I don’t anticipate indifference. In the last six months, I’ve been listening to a lot of a breaks. If you know anything about hip-hop’s history, you know that its musical roots lie in DJs creating musical backing by using two copies of a record to repeat [...]
Good dog…
It’s interesting how certain countries end up producing a particular sound in their musical efforts. For example, places like Brasil and Japan have consistently produced musical artists who have a seemingly delicate light sound. In like fashion, there seems to be a particular style that one encounters out of northern Europe, such as Denmark, Sweden, [...]
Studio 60: Week 8
I meant to write more about Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, but others have been liveblogging and sniping and I just couldn’t get it together. There is plenty of valid criticism to hurl at Studio 60, but many of its flaws were also present in The West Wing and Sports Night. I’ve heard some [...]
For the Boys…
Saturday morning brought the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. In 1918, that time brought Armistice, the end of World War I. The conflict was known at the time as “The War to End All Wars,” a nice piece of savage irony. It was also called the Great War; later, they [...]