Sublime

If you look at the history of professionalization of any kind, you’ll see that it tends to follow this route. In America and Europe, a great deal of professionalization occurred in the nineteenth century, when most gentlemen of breeding considered themselves amateurs at all kinds of disciplines. Go all the way back to Jefferson, who collected fossi

Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi started Substack in 2017, but their history dates back years before. Chris co-founded the anonymous posting app Kik during his third year at the University of Waterloo (2010). He spent the better part of eight years at the company where he met his soon-to-be co-founders. When Chris left Kik in early 201

On “Springtime in Chicago” Sonny played a piano so out of tune it sounded “prepared,” altered for percussive effects. And the electronic delay used on this cut was so extreme that it reverberates like Jamaican dub music which would not be heard until the 1960s.

My friend the clown and activist Wavy Gravy also tries to change the system, but in a very different style from Lenny Bruce. Wavy once told me he was picketing against the nuclear work at the Livermore National Laboratory in California. The police came to break up the sit-in and he was in a Santa Claus clown costume. They grabbed him, took off his

Until recently, the entertainment industry has been on a growth tear—so much so, that anything artsy or indie or alternative got squeezed as collateral damage.

In a 2006 New Yorker article, “The Formula,” McCready told Malcolm Gladwell, “We take a new CD far in advance of its release date. We analyze all twelve tracks.