Fearing & Loathing Music’s Biggest Awards Nights

121119-psy-hammer-amas

READ MORE AT SPIN

Whatever you think “going to the Grammys” means, we guarantee it’s less glamorous and more bizarre than what you’re imagining. At least for most of the press, who sit in small room adjacent to the ceremony, watching the thing on TVs and praying that a famous person will make a wrong turn and wind up on our measly little stage with a microphone miraculously in hand.

And it’s not just Music’s Biggest Night. In the awards season bridging 2012 to 2013, I attended the MTV Video Music Awards, the American Music Awards, and, yes, the Grammys, and my surreal behind-the-scenes experience wound up the stuff of an unexpected trilogy. In 2014, I returned to the Grammys just to make sure its was still weird (spoiler alert: it was). Continue reading

Live: Coachella 2011 Roundup, Day One

Sleigh Bells slay balls. (Erik Voake)

Late, late, late. The internet has already forgotten that Coachella 2011 ever happened, but for posterity’s sake, here’s what I wrote about it for Spin.

DAY ONE: Odd Future & Pharell, Sleigh Bells, Cold Cave, Crystal Castles, Ariel Pink*, YACHT, !!! (plus lil blurbs on Paul McCartney & Best Coast, Omar Rodriguez Lopez & Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Titus Andronicus & Lil B).

*The inimitable Carles of Hipster Runoff picked up on my Ariel Pink diss.