New Snow on Unfinished Park

The proposal said completion by October, maybe November. Just have to give up using the park for an entire Summer. Heard they found contaminated soil. Delayed the whole thing. You would think by now proposals in New Jersey would only be accepted by developers who’ve already encountered contaminated soil. No Christmas tree lighting, no enjoying the first snow fall of the year. Progress does seem to be progressing here, in Hamilton Park. Can’t really see the snow falling, late in the afternoon, before the storm gained momentum that made Autumn leave like a lion!

Amtrak Waiting Area

Found myself in Penn Station, waiting for a train. I love Amtrak. People bemoan the passing of the great passenger trains from our culture, and rightly so. Probably was pretty cool to talk to a Pullman Porter, smoke cigarettes while waiting for steak in a dining car, the Sunset Limited is pulling out. Good times are not only in the history books though. Amtrak is still pretty great. Amtrak Workers love their jobs, they actually care about train travel and the experience of the passenger. Trains fascinate me and gladden my heart. Ever fall asleep in New York and wake up in Washington D.C.? Automobiles are isolating, as isolating as horses. Jack Kerouac might have glorified car-love but Neal Cassidy was brakemen in the railroad earth. Airplanes? So sleek and modern, but it’s like going into a hospital. You worry if the cure is going to be worse than the disease. What a humiliating way to go to and from home. Trains are civilized. Trains respect. Coming around the bend, took my baby but it never will again. All decked out in Christmas decorations. Waiting area for Amtrak in Penn Station… some time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We’re all transitory here, except for the Amtrak workers. Happy, helpful. Clever, the double train entendres of the Amtrak signs—letting off steam, steam locomotives. The train beneath the tree, memories of the train you just got off of, or anticipating the one you’re about to board. Eternity is this life in a different scale. Trains can supply half the metaphors you need to understand mortality

Frozen Muck, Dormant Pestilence

The first formations of ice on our fair city’s fetid ponds and puddles. Our favorite of course is the Downtown Mosquito Hatchery on Columbus. Another year goes by and this barely started project remains fallow, untouched. The mosquito population in Hudson County increased 300 percent in the summer of 2009; maybe we can initiate the new decade by breaking that record six months from now. Think about the hundreds of thousands of dormant mosquito eggs safe beneath the ice in their frozen muck hibernation paradise. Why worry about insect-borne disease when we are busy ignoring H1N1. Think about the potential hazards in your own mind before attempting to fix a Summer problem before it is even Summer!

Oxford American: 11th Annual Southern Music Issue

Southerners share with New Yorkers an attitude of exceptionalism—America is their country and we just live here. Maybe it has to do with the fact New York City was the only Northern city to support secession. New Jersey-ites are more like Midwesterners, we share Midwestern angst, defensiveness—I’m better than no one and no one is better than me. When it comes to music, it is hard to argue against Southern exceptionalism. The music that basically has come to define American Music (and by extension, ourselves), was discovered below the Mason Dixon Line—Rock & Roll, Blues, Soul, Gospel, R&B, Bluegrass, Country—you know the litany.

One of the Holy Days of Obligation on the Serious Music Lovers Liturgical Calendar is the annual Southern Music Issue by Oxford American Magazine, and this year’s the best yet. I might have said it every issue, this is their 11th –the magazine is a quarterly and other issues during the year deal with Southern Literature, Food, and I think Architecture. I’m not sure. I sometimes get the Literature one, but not always. I always get the music one.

Without a doubt, without question, it is the best Music Writing of the year. Love Rolling Stone, whose editorial is more towards news and what’s happening (and way too much celebrity journalism), besides the great political and popular culture coverage. The Brits do a great job with Uncut and Mojo, and like Oxford American, they have a CD with the issue, but Good Lord, them Brits are cheeky, and they have some solid interviews, but those magazine are more geared towards record collecting—what is the music worth having—and lack social history and context. The Brits remind us why we love the music we love. Relix is similar to the Brits, although the CDs they have are not quite as clever. Oxford American tells us stuff we don’t know. Accompanying CD and caliber of the writing, sorry in spite of the best efforts, hands down this issue of this publication is the best.

The CD is part of the experience of this magazine—the magazine features in-depth articles on the songs and artists that are on the CD. The connecting theme is of course—the South, but it is the New South, a multi-racial culture. Actually just black and white, I don’t remember much Asian, Hispanic or Native America in the magazine’s writing and let’s face it, those groups haven’t had much of an impact on Music made in the South. These are liberal, progressive southerners; honest about the troubled past but intent on letting the past be its only definition. God Fearing, Intellectual, Witty. The magazine is usually in the literary magazine section of magazine racks, but unlike most other literary magazines, it’s not boring.

The bulk of the tracks are no-hit or one hit wonders, and those hits tend to be regional. These are the obscure outsiders only the die-hard music geeks and serious musicologists tend to know about. The artists have degrees of obscurity, and sometimes the magazine will pick somebody well known, but take a look at a specific period. Peter Guralnick, the author of the great two volume Biography of Elvis, had a long piece last year about Jerry Lee Lewis. Speaking of Elvis, a coupla three issues ago, the CD had the first live version of Suspicious Minds, pretty hip.


Unlike other music magazines, Oxford American presents an array of types of music articles—straight-out interviews, appreciations, historical analysis, why so and so is important or why so and so is so important to me, or how they tracked down the song and the scant information about the artist. Most of the artists are old timey—the 50s are particularly rich vein, although there are some decent contemporary music, such as Kelly Hogan, with “Papa was a Rodeo,” a kind of Gen Y retro folk rock ode to accepting irresponsible parenting, “Water Tower,” a 1990 recording by the Gunbunnies that sound like a cross between the JayHawks and Nirvana, or what has to be most bizarre rap song, Savoir Faire by Suga City, with a bass line played by a Cello, it is both disturbing and appealing.

My tastes tend towards New Old Music, and this issue delivers. A blues name I’ve heard of but never heard, Bukka White, does Parchment Prison, sounds as good as Robert Johnson, funky gospel with the Jubilee Hummingbirds, and Frank Frost, simply stunning—sun record bluesman, discovered by Sam Phillips. And the Rockabilly—Billy Lee Riley gets deserved props, a fascinating ditty called I Viborate, by some one-shot cats Bobby Brown & The Curios. No, the four-disc Rockin Bones by Rhino Records didn’t have it all after all. Song sounds familiar I realized—the melody is a Great Balls of Fire rip-off! They have a song by Sonny Burgess—someone I’ve only heard about, I’m going to get some of his CDs. And, the topper—Treat Me Like A Dog, by the great, Sleepy LaBeef. It’s a song of his I never heard, from what seems to be a mid-90s out of print record. Damned if it is not the best one of his I’ve heard yet. Weirdest X-File song is “It Happened in Tennessee,” a folky epic replete with studio flourishes that reminded me of Pistol Pete on the recent Springsteen, or some over the top Cash like Johnny Yuma. The song is by Wayne Jackson, who was a Stax trumpet player, who blew, according to the accompanying article, on more than 50 #1 songs, from Dock of the Bay and Soul Man, to Suspicious Minds and U2’s Angel of Harlem. This song is a story song—although the plot is as obscure as Lily, Rosemary & The Jack of Hearts, guitar is the main instrument and is simply—out there in a no-way dude, yes WAY, kind of way.

I always go to the store after an issue and seek out some new CDS, and this year, it will be Frost and Sonny for sure.

Basically the CD is the best mixed tape you will get this year. And, with this issue, you get two—more than 50 songs, no kidding and all worth hearing and most classics waiting to be discovered. For some reason, the collection is better this year, maybe there’s more diversity, or there is a nice selection of Rockabilly, or there are fewer glaring mistakes in selection, a tendency that flawed some recent issues. All I know, is that I’ve been playing the CDs for a few days now and the player ain’t sick of them yet.

To inaugurate its second decade, Oxford American has started a new series. Not only are they releasing two CDs per music issue (they did the same last year), one of the CDs are devoted to the music of a single Southern State—this time out, Arkansas, where the handsome publication is produced. The idea is the artist has to be born in the state—an surprisingly, Arkansas gave birth to Ronnie Hawkins, Levon Helm, Al Green and Johnny Cash, among many others but as the editorial pointed, instead, they “hone in on artists we haven’t spotlighted before.” So, we get a fascinating Rockabilly by Andy Starr, a forgotten star-crossed rockabilly artist, however, one of the best pieces of journalism I’ve read in a few months, by A. Ferrel James that finds this sort of lost soul, a recluse living in rural Arkansas, and like the best of Southern writing, it’s a heartbreaking yet funny read.

Like I said, the best musical journalism of the year. I noticed that this year’s issue doesn’t have a lot of “name” writers—in some circles the magazine is quite prestigious, so well known writers like Guralnick accept assignments. There are also more articles—a complete piece, on each artists—and there is a real consistency to readability and quality writing, a consistency that sometimes wasn’t upheld. Oxford American has set a new standard for themselves and apparently have done so by using lesser known scribes. Well done.

Used to be, the magazine came out at the end of the summer. Then it was sometimes in the Fall. This year their website said December 1. It was finally in a Barnes & Noble on December 8. The past few years has mean the issue’s release date is a moving target (welcome to our new world of magazine publishing ladies & Gentlemen)—but if you love music and music writing, go out and get it Now!

Vist: www.oxfordamerican.org

Jersey City Media News

Now that Editor & Publisher has folded somebody has to take up the slack. Don’t worry, it will not be I, except for this one time. I was sent this press release from the dudes at the Jersey City Independent. They’ve been actually quite nice to me and Dislocations. We’ve only communicated via Email, but they were linking to my blog early on—I didn’t even know how they found it—in other words, directing people to some of my esoteric Jersey City coverage. I didn’t expect that at all, and it turned out to be a pretty cool thing. I am actually getting readers I haven’t met. In turn, the website is worth checking out on a daily basis, since it alerts you to Jersey City occurrences and events and even news sometimes. Since my day job still deals with print publishing, all I can say, more power to them, since it’s a tough row to hoe. Let’s just say, Earth Fares better in 2012 than print publishing does in today’s marketplace. I’m sure this acquisition though will improve our local media, because let’s face it, can you imagine it getting any worse!
Visit JCI

Visit NEW


The press release un-edited

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEDec. 11, 2009

Bucking the trend of media contraction, the Jersey City Independent is expanding into print after just one year of publishing a hyperlocal web-only alternative newspaper. The Independent has acquired NEW magazine, a four-year-old arts, culture and lifestyle magazine that covers Jersey City.

NEW, which comes out twice a year, was founded in November 2005 by Amanda Assadi-Rullow; in 2007 she decided she wanted to expand the magazine and offer a stronger editorial presence. For that, she turned to Jon Whiten, the Independent’s co-founder and current editor. He has been NEW’s managing editor ever since.

“When Amanda approached us about purchasing NEW, I knew that we had a great opportunity to build on the success of our online work with a print product,” Whiten says. “The magazine will enable us to explore the arts and culture scene in Jersey City more fully while we continue to cover that scene — plus local news and politics — on the web.”

Shane Smith, the Independent’s publisher and co-owner, says the decision to purchase NEW was a no-brainer.

“We’re an independent, locally-owned, forward-thinking alternative to the publications that are out there, and so is NEW,” he says. “In a fairly small media market, it made a lot of sense for us to join forces.”

Assadi-Rullow says that while she’ll be sad to let the magazine she founded go, she is happy that it found a good home.

“This is a completely natural progression, as well as a necessary transition that will ensure outstanding journalism,” she says. “I have always wanted NEW to be an independent, refreshing voice for our community and this move will only enhance that effort.”

And Assadi-Rullow isn’t leaving the magazine completely behind either. She will continue to lend her design skills and sharp eye to NEW as its creative director. Meanwhile, the Independent’s current team of writers and editors — many of whom have written for NEW in the past — will keep producing content for the magazine, ensuring a virtually seamless transition for NEW’s 40,000-plus readers.

“We’re not looking to go back to square one here,” Whiten says. “We want to build on the solid foundation the magazine already stands on, and continue to invest in the best writing, photography and design we can put out there.”

Smith says that despite the web evangelism being preached in the media world, physical magazines still offer a unique experience that’s not going away.

“People love to say that print is dead, but we know that we’ll be able to connect with a whole new audience with a print publication, in a way that complements what we offer on the web,” Smith says. “That furthers our mission of providing the community with an alternative to the local daily, and it’s great for our bottom line.”

Terms of the deal, finalized earlier this month, were not disclosed. The first issue of NEW under its new owners is due to hit the streets and stores of Jersey City in April.

ABOUT The Jersey City Independent
The Jersey City Independent is the alternative source for news and culture in Jersey City. The website, which began publishing in Dec. 2008 and formally launched this March, has experienced tremendous growth as residents have come to rely on its comprehensive coverage of city government, local news and the arts+culture scene. The Independent not only covers the community, it is a part of it as well, as shown by its sponsorship of cultural offerings like JC Fridays, the 4th Street Arts & Music Festival and the Jersey City Book Festival.

Tree Planters

I thought they were really big garbage pails too, but no, apparently they are concrete planters so our tree-lined Newark Avenue will never have big trees in the ground! Oh, stop, they look. Read where there will be 15 concrete planters on Newark Avenue. Of course, before they filled them with dirt and planted the bare branches our fellow citizens used them as trash receptacles, and now those individuals can resume their traditional littering. I wonder what the peat moss look like come spring.

Two Light Lamp Post

How many PSE&G Utility Workers does it take to screw in a Grove Street Lamp Post? Okay, that line sounded funnier when I thought of it, before I saw the pictures I took. I was across the street, it was already dark, forgive me. A two light lamp post was finally erected. Dark Green pole. Who knew we needed one until we have one. Or is that two, or two in one. On one?