The Clash – Chris Writes Things

READ IT ON SPIN

This one’s, ahem, a Labour of Love if you will (shout out UB40). It went live a few days after my D’Angelo review, and I was too embarrassed to post these two side by side. Four months later, I’m into it. Like so many lefty caucasians raised in 420-friendly families, I ingested a lot of reggae as a yout’ and, for a brief high school moment, thought I’d found saviors in 311 and Sublime. I still bump a lot of Jamaican roots, but the time has come to give dap to the odd phenomena of blond dreadlocks and fake patois (shout out Das Racist), plus the restless audio hybridizing of the ’90s. This list goes back to the very birth of white reggae in 1965, and ends in 2014 with that most irie and unexpected of recent hits, “Rude.” Peep it on SPIN.* Continue reading →

Damon Albarn FTW. A lifer makes a masterwork.

Had the pleasure of witnessing the Gorillaz circus when it came to town back in October and among what must be close to a thousand concerts witnessed, this one is now permanently lodged in my personal top five. No joke. Damon Albarn has done something magical with music (and a huge effing budget). I had the added pleasure of speaking with him and his Gorillaz cohort Jamie Hewlett for Spin’s year-end cov’g. Here’s an excerpt:

“It’s like a juggernaut once it starts,” says Damon Albarn. The peculiar pop project he and illustrator Jamie Hewlett founded 12 years ago in a shared London flat has grown from a virtual band of comic-book characters to a traveling spectacle of Barnumesque proportions. “There’s no stopping it,” says Albarn. “The magic is in the way it mesmerizes, brings you into its world.

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