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Recently in Salon Media

Alt
Rogue advertisers
Who's to blame for trashy mags? Intestinal fatigue? Speak and others grapple with their demons. Plus: Embalming alternatives and Ikea obsession.
By Jenn Shreve
[10/15/99]

Media
A Dunne deal
In his new memoir, Dominick Dunne describes how he found fame the old-fashioned way: He yearned for it.
By Sean Elder
[10/13/99]

Alt
Burn, sacred cow, burn!
Lefty weeklies turn on their idols. Plus: Ben is Dead dies, the 17th Annual Testicle Festival and the boy who said yes -- and lived.
By Jenn Shreve
[10/08/99]

Media
Kubrick's last film: An open and shut case?
"Eyes Wide Shut" is still roiling the waters. Brill's Content: The media sucks! Harper's: The critics suck!
By Sean Elder
[10/08/99]

Media
Crossing the Atlantic
Michael Kelly and William Whitworth talk about the changing of the guard at one of the nation's most respected magazines.
By Sean Elder
[10/06/99]

Complete archives for Media

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1. Stan Ridgway "Anatomy" (Ultra Modern/New West)

Coming out of the old L.A. punk scene with Wall of Voodoo, Ridgway has always peeked around corners as a kind of detective ("of the heart," I think you're supposed to add). Here the liner art plays off the '50s moderne credits of the 1959 movie "Anatomy of a Murder." But unlike other detectives, Ridgway has all the time in the world. He's not going anywhere; he doesn't solve anything; he just takes notes. The slowness in his singing is like the slowness in the way Dwight Yoakam's trucker moves in "Red Rock West." He misses nothing and he keeps his mouth shut. That's a hard trick for a singer, but that's the feeling you get: In Ridgway's songs, not a word is spoken out loud. They all take place in his thoughts as he tries to figure out what he's seen. The music is muscular, but all restraint: You don't raise your voice if you're not really using it. "Wrong, so wrong, we're wrong," Ridgway says in "Mission Bell"; he winds the words around each other until the song they cast back to, a 20-year-old Elvis Presley's "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone," has grown up without ever announcing it's there at all.

2. Heather Duby "Post to Wire" (Sub Pop)

Seattle 25-year-old with a deeper voice than you'd put to her Juliette Binoche haircut pursues interesting project: Take outsider cool and early-'80s synth bumps and echoes into Sarah MacLachlan territory. It's a seductive journey, even though she may never get back.

Greil Marcus Greil's column appears every other Monday in Salon Media + Archives

3. Chicago "If You Leave Me Now" in "Three Kings"

On the day after the end of the Gulf War, the creamy 1976 No. 1 adult-contemporary hit is playing in the purloined Mercedes as Sgt. Ice Cube and an Iraqi rebel hairdresser pull up to the bunker where they're going to try to rescue Sgt. Mark Walhberg from torture, the hairdresser silently mouthing the words as if they're a prayer.

4. Robert Crais "L.A. Requiem" (Doubleday)

P.I. Elvis Cole is riding with angry cop Samantha Dolan when her choice of L7's angry "Shove" on the radio inspires a critical meditation on the strategic use of pop music in everyday life. "'Too on the nose, Dolan,'" Cole says. "'The music should be counter to your character, and then the statement would be more dramatic. Try Shawn Colvin.'

"Dolan jerked the sedan around a produce delivery truck and blasted through an intersection that had already gone red. Horns blew. She flipped them off."

5. Blank culture sighting (Oct. 1, 63rd St. & College Ave., Oakland, Calif.)

Street flyer glued to newspaper rack, black and white with vertical lines. Scrawled motto: "I eat fascist." Graphic: squared, elongated Hitler figure. On his sleeve: "Pez."

Next page | David Lynch, Iggy Pop, Fleetwood Mac