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Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Happy Birthday Johnny Cash

Today is Johnny Cash's birthday. He would have been 82.

Also don't forget that this upcoming April marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the Man in Black's celebrated first volume of his American Recordings series produced by Rick Rubin.

I hope Rick does something to celebrate this masterpiece of a record. There's gotta be a live boot somewhere he can tack on as a second disc?

Perhaps his Glastonbury gig from '94? Its a good one...

http://birthday.johnnycashonline.com/

Thursday, February 13, 2014

REMEMBERING MAGGIE ESTEP

Maggie Estep, dead at age 50. It hit me hard, this sudden loss.

Maggie Estep is an icon for women like me—women who never quite fit society’s mold for femininity.

I was a college student when I first heard and saw Maggie captivate an audience at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café. My brother told me he was taking me to a reading, and I imagined I’d be bored, eating bad cheese and drinking cheap wine while listening to literary pretensions being aired.

Never did I imagine I’d see a small woman take the stage and bring everyone to the edge of their seats and keep them there for an hour. Maggie’s punk-rock influenced poetry, her novels and countless magazine articles (some of which I am honored to have edited in her compilation, Love Dance of the Mechanical Animals) and even her underrated music (I know every word to every song on "No More Mister Nice Girl") still sound and read like new today.

She was a fiercely talented, sexy, funny and timeless artist; one who will truly be missed. -A. Majidi

Watch Maggie Estep perform her hilarious poem "Emotional Idiot" on HBO's Def Jam Poetry