Dystopian Dance Party

Tag: lou reed

  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: Memorial Day, 2016-2017

    Well, here we are: for the second consecutive year, we’re turning Memorial Day weekend into a time of remembrance for the many great artists we lost since last May. But because this is still Dystopian Dance Party, and we’re constitutionally incapable of being reverent for more than a few minutes at a time, please be aware that the resulting podcast is about 70% wake, 30% roast (well, maybe 60/40). Just believe us when we tell you it’s all coming from a place of love. Hopefully, while everyone good continues to die and leave us trapped on this smoldering husk of a planet, we can at least entertain you (and ourselves) with our impressions of “The Force M.D.’s Meet the Fat Boys”… R.I.P. to Trisco Pearson. Show notes below.

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  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: Memorial Day, 2015-2016

    With every passing week, 2016 feels more and more like a never-ending, real-life Grammy Awards tribute montage. We couldn’t even go the six days between recording and posting the podcast without losing another pop music icon: this time, Marshall Jones of the Ohio Players, word of whose death regrettably reached us only after we had finished editing. Clearly, this is a trying time to be a music fan. And, as I’ve found myself saying more than a few times in the past several months, the sheer volume of notable musicians’ deaths starts to feel overwhelming to a small site like ours. I’m not a full-time obituary writer, so even many worthy artists who passed away have inevitably gone unmemorialized.

    That’s why, in the spirit of the real Memorial Day holiday, we’re taking the time to commemorate those the music world has lost since last May. Unfortunately, this will almost certainly be a recurring feature: the cruel realities of the human lifespan, combined with the generational ebb and flow of American popular music, means that things are only going to get worse in the coming years. And sadly, even this tribute isn’t truly exhaustive–even aside from the aforementioned omission of Marshall Jones, we’re only really talking about musicians of whom we have some miniscule level of knowledge, so plenty of important people are still going unmourned (at least by us).  But we did our best, and we at least tried to do everyone justice. Here’s hoping we get a break, at least for a couple more weeks.

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  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: The Gospel According to Rock ‘n’ Roll

    In American popular music, there’s always been a fine line between the sacred and the secular. On this episode of the Dystopian Dance Party podcast, we talk about a few of the songs for which that line is finer than most: nominally “secular” songs with the lyrical and/or stylistic underpinnings of gospel music. Just in time for Easter weekend!

    As always, show notes are below, along with a Spotify playlist for those of you who want to hear the songs without our standard jibber-jabber.

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  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: David Bowie, 1947-2016

    Last week, we decided that our next podcast would be devoted to one of our mutual favorite artists, David Bowie, in celebration of his 69th birthday and the release of his 25th studio album, ★: sort of a more personal companion piece to the career-spanning Bowie guide we published that Friday. We didn’t expect to be recording an elegy.

    Early Monday morning, however, we got the sad news that Bowie was no longer with us. That news irrevocably changed the tone of our tribute, which we recorded on Tuesday night. But it isn’t all solemn mourning (though one of us does cry at one point–no spoilers which one). Instead, the following is a personal reflection on the many ways in which pop music–that tawdry, cheap, commercial entertainment–can shape, and even irrevocably change our lives, through the prism of an entertainer who did just that for both us. We hope you enjoy it!

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