Finn, Sheff, Cave, and Berryman

Who is John Berryman?

And what does he mean to Craig Finn of the Hold Steady (in "Stuck Between Stations"), Will Sheff of Okkervil River (in "John Allyn Smith Sails", and Nick Cave (in "We Call Upon The Author To Explain")? And why now, 36 years after his suicide?

Oh there won't be any answers here. This is just observation.

Maybe It Is All Waves and Radiation: The Airborne Toxic Event

Pennypacker's been reading Don DeLillo's White Noise for most of the last two weeks, so when the band known as the Airborne Toxic Event became known of tonight, it was a bit of...well...Deja vu. Well not really - but it was a tad stunning. Especially considering one of Pennypacker's favorite pastimes is to find band names in potentially every phrase in the language...but this one had not occurred to me in the last two weeks. Maybe I'm on Dylar.

And they're actually quite good too. Credit goes to Oh My Rockness for its latest batch of podcasted mp3's (ignore my weak comment on that page..."kinda" and "weird" may work on other sites but they have no room on this page).

She Walked In With Legs As Long As The Mighty Mississipp

The gloriously blunt, debauched, fantastical world of pulp - which spawned film noir - is getting the treatment from some two-bit mug and he went and got himself on the radio.

Boy if I had a nickel for every time some skirt walked through my door and got me mixed up in a mess of guns, booze, and dames, I'd be sitting in an ivory tower on Park Avenue. Instead, I'm down here in the muck, running this two-bit operation, slurping down absinthe like I'm Ernest Hemingway. Of all the luck. And the next time some cheap floozy tries to get her hooks into me, I'll give her the lug. It'll be curtains for her and all the other bozos. And if I don't, well, that's half the adventure. Anything for a buck, Mac. Anything for a buck.