Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 8

July 19-20, 2025: AmericanStudying Sinners: Other Scholars on the Film

[A couplemonths back, my wife and I were blown away by one of the best films either ofus has seen in a long while: Ryan Coogler’s stunning Sinners. This weekI’ve AmericanStudied different contexts for this phenomenal work, leading up tothis weekend post sharing great pieces from fellow SinnersStudiers!]

As you wouldexpect, there have been tons of thoughtful and important responses to Sinners,from FilmStudiers and AmericanStudiers alike. Here, in no particular order, area handful of them—please share more in comments!

One of my twofavorite current reviewers, OutlawVern

Blueskythoughts from my other favorite reviewer, VaughnJoy

RichardNewby for The Hollywood Reporter (as also shared by Vaughn)

KahlilGreene for his History Can’t Hide newsletter

Andfinally, make sure to check out Jemar Tisby and Keisha N. Blain’s vital Sinners syllabus for the AAIHS’s BlackPerspectives blog

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other Sinners responses, including your own, that you’dadd?

July 18, 2025: AmericanStudying Sinners: Interracial Romance

[A couplemonths back, my wife and I were blown away by one of the best films either ofus has seen in a long while: Ryan Coogler’s stunning Sinners. I hopeyou’ve all had a chance to check it out already, and if not, that you’ll do soright now and then come back to read this weeklong series of posts inspired bydifferent layers to this phenomenal work!]

[NOTE: Itried to mostly avoid SPOILERS in Monday’s post, but I don’t think I’llcompletely be able to for the rest of the week (and in fact will be spoiling agood bit in today’s post). If you haven’t seen Sinners yet, please do soand then come back to read this series!]

On anotherimportant layer to the film’s mid-credits scene, and why I love it so much.

First thingsfirst: the most beautiful romance in Sinners, and the one that produced theother closest nominee (alongside the mid-credits scene, as I discussed yesterdayand to which I’ll return in a moment) for my favorite scene in the film (onelocated right at the conclusion, and one that I’m not going to spoil), is betweenWonmi Mosaku’s Annie and Michael B. Jordan’s Smoke (one of the two twins Jordanplays). Maybe I’m biased because both that romance and that stunning climacticscene also connect incredibly movingly and importantly to their shared experienceof parenting, at its most tragic but also and especially at its most enduringand defining. But in any case, Annie and Smoke are one of the most moving and inspiringcouples I’ve seen on screen in years, and I didn’t want to share a post aboutromance in Sinners without paying tribute to them (and once more to Mosaku’scaptivating performance, as I did in Tuesday’s post as well).

But Sinnersfeatures other romances too—indeed, the subject of every post in this week’sseries could be connected to a couple—and one that grows in depth andsignificance across the course of the film is that between Michael B. Jordan’sStack (the other twin) and Hailee Steinfeld’s Mary. What seems at the start ofthe film to be just a pair of resentful exes (if exes with a very complicated personaland familial history, as Mary’s mother had basically raised the twins aftertheir own parents passed), and then evolves into a lustful and ultimately destructivereunion, becomes (again, SPOILERS aplenty here) in the mid-credits scene aliterally eternal romance, with both Stack and Mary now vampires who aretogether in the 1990s (and dressed appropriately, in a very funny visual gag)and seemingly will be able to stay together for all time (unless someone stakesthem or they get caught out in the sun, anyway). I wrote in Monday’s post abouthow Coogler complicates his vampire villains, and this final depiction ofvampires in the film does so even more fully, as I would argue we have to beexcited that this couple have been able to get and stay together, and that’sthanks to head vamp Remmick.  

But theirshared vampirism is not the aspect of Stack and Mary’s identities that makes melove this scene and romance so much. The pair are an interracial couple, andnot just in the obvious sense—Mary (apparentlylike Steinfeld herself) is herself 1/8th African American (an identitycategory known for a long time in American history and culture as an “octoroon”),making this pair even more fully multiracial and cross-cultural than they mightappear. I don’t imagine that Coogler was thinking specifically of WilliamFaulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! when he wrote that aspect of thecharacter, but that’s one of our most prominent culturaldepictions of this identity category, and moreover I would put Sinnersalongside Absalom on the short list of cultural works that deal most powerfullywith intersecting themes of race, region, history, art, memory, and more. Andof course multiracial identities and interracial romances aren’t just the stuffof American literature and film and culture—they are at the heart of our collectivehistories, including if not especially ourlegal and political ones. Just one more way in which the stunning Sinnersis a must-watch for all AmericanStudiers.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

July 17, 2025: AmericanStudying Sinners: The Blues

[A couplemonths back, my wife and I were blown away by one of the best films either ofus has seen in a long while: Ryan Coogler’s stunning Sinners. I hopeyou’ve all had a chance to check it out already, and if not, that you’ll do soright now and then come back to read this weeklong series of posts inspired bydifferent layers to this phenomenal work!]

[NOTE: Itried to mostly avoid SPOILERS in Monday’s post, but I don’t think I’llcompletely be able to for the rest of the week (and in fact will be spoiling agood bit in today’s post). If you haven’t seen Sinners yet, please do soand then come back to read this series!]

On two stunningscenes that embody the best of a foundational musical genre.

In lieu ofa full first paragraph of my own, I want to share three prior posts where I’vefeatured student work on the Blues and American literature and culture. Mostespecially that includes FSU English Studies alum SandraHamilton’s great Guest Post on the Blues. But I’ve also highlighted excellentstudent papers inspired by Langston Hughes’s poem “The Weary Blues” in twodifferent semester reflection posts, hereand here.Hope you’ll check out those posts featuring our awesome FSU students, and thencome on back for two layers to how Sinners BluesStudies.

Welcomeback! By far the most famous scene in Sinners—and justifiably so, as it’sone of the most stunning cinematic sequences I’ve ever seen—is the central moment (that’sonly a snippet of it, but it’ll give you a sense) when main character Sammie(talented young musician and songwriter Miles Caton, making hisfilm debut) performs his original Blues song “I Lied to You,” and the jukejoint transforms to become a home to musical performances from past and future,many different cultures, countless communities. It’s a performance and sequenceso red-hot that it literally burns down the juke joint (well, I guess it metaphoricallydoes as the building remains standing after, but audiences watch it burn down atthe scene’s climax), but it’s also something much more powerful still: the mostevocative depiction I’ve ever encountered of the ways that music connects us,across space and time, across culture and community, across identities andstories, across all that can divide us. As I briefly mentioned in Monday’spost, the film’s vampires seem to want something similar with their music; butthe truth is, their performances don’t come close to capturing these goals incomparison with Sammie’s.

And thenthere’s the film’s hugely important mid-credits scene (significant SPOILERS inwhat follows—if you haven’t seen the film, stop reading, go see it, and stayfor the credits!). In it the film jumps ahead 60 years to show us an elderlySammie (now played by Blueslegend Buddy Guy), who has survived, successfully pursued his dreams of musicalstardom, and apparently opened his own Blues joint, named after a significantlove interest from the film and in which we see him reconnecting with multiplelayers of his past. I think this was my favorite scene in the film (acompetitive list to be sure), and the main reason is that it embodies somethingvery specific about both the Blues and African American art: the way that theyso often express hope not in spite of, but directly through, our hardest andmost painful histories and stories, personal and collective alike. I wasreminded in that moment of my favorite sequence of lines from Hughes’s “The WearyBlues”: “Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool/He played that sad raggy tune likea musical fool./Sweet Blues!/Coming from a black man’s soul.” Sinners isabout many things, as I hope this whole series illustrates, but at its heart itseeks to embody (and does quite beautifully) something very similar to whatHughes expresses there.

LastSinnersStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

July 16, 2025: AmericanStudying Sinners: The Mississippi Chinese

[A couplemonths back, my wife and I were blown away by one of the best films either ofus has seen in a long while: Ryan Coogler’s stunning Sinners. I hopeyou’ve all had a chance to check it out already, and if not, that you’ll do soright now and then come back to read this weeklong series of posts inspired bydifferent layers to this phenomenal work!]

[NOTE: Itried to mostly avoid SPOILERS in Monday’s post, but I don’t think I’ll completelybe able to for the rest of the week. If you haven’t seen Sinners yet,please do so and then come back to read this series!]

On a 1970sbook and 2010s article that help contextualize one of the film’s most uniquefamilies.

In 1971,the late, great historian and educator JamesLoewen (whom I was profoundly proud to call a mentor andfriend after I landed him for the 2011 NEASA Conference keynote lecture) publishedhis first book, TheMississippi Chinese: Between Black and White. A revision of his HarvardSociology doctoral dissertation, if one no doubt significantly expanded after Loewen began teachingat Mississippi’s historically black Tougaloo College, The MississippiChinese utilizes both extensive interviews with current members of thissizeable but often overlooked Mississippi community and historicaldocumentation of that community’s post-Civil War origins and growth over thesubsequent century. Although the exclusion of the community’s children from segregatedwhite schools was deemed Constitutional by the Supreme Court in Gong Lum v. Rice(1927), Loewen makes a compelling case that this community were and are, histitle suggests, complicatedly located between the state and region’s two most prominentracialized categories.

Loewen’sbook focuses on the Mississippi Chinese’s historical and sociologicalrealities, while the award-winning 2012 PhilologicalQuarterly article “The Foreignerin Yoknapatawpha: Rethinking Race in the Global South,” authored by my collegefriend and blog GuestPoster Heidi Kim, is most interested in representations of this community,especially in the fictions of Mississippi’s favorite literary son William Faulkner.As Heidi describes her argument in that above hyperlinked summary, she both notes“Faulkner’s extension of racial hysteria over miscegenation to include” theMississippi Chinese but also, and importantly, finds in his works “thepossibility of eventual social intermixture and inclusion in his AmericanSouth.” Which makes her argument at least roughly parallel to Loewen’s (if ofcourse informed by four decades’ worth of further research into this communityand its contexts) in seeing this community as part of its larger Mississippisetting and society, yet also reflecting, in cultural works as well as in historicaland sociological realities, the possibility of something distinct within thatworld.  

It's avery nerdy thing to say, I realize, but nothing made me more excited whilewatching Sinners (a competitive category I assure you) than realizingthat Coogler had includedthe Mississippi Chinese among his central characters, with the family ofGrace Chow (Li Jun Li), her husband Bo (Yao), and their teenage daughter Lisa(Helena Hu). As that hyperlinked Variety article highlights, Coogler hasfamilial connections to this community through his multiracial wifeZinzi Evans, reminding us that, whatever the Supreme Court and other racistentities might argue, all of these American communities are deeply intertwined inour history and present alike. But in his representation of these MississippiChinese characters, and especially in a long establishing shot early in thefilm that takes audiences between the family’s two parallel grocery storeslocated on the Black and white sides of Clarksdale’s main street, Coogler alsoreveals his awareness of the community’s in-between status—and creates anothercultural work that, like Faulkner’s, illustrates while also ultimatelycomplicating that vision of the unique community known as the MississippiChinese.  

NextSinnersStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

July 15, 2025: AmericanStudying Sinners: Hoodoo

[A couplemonths back, my wife and I were blown away by one of the best films either ofus has seen in a long while: Ryan Coogler’s stunning Sinners. I hopeyou’ve all had a chance to check it out already, and if not, that you’ll do soright now and then come back to read this weeklong series of posts inspired bydifferent layers to this phenomenal work!]

[NOTE: Itried to mostly avoid SPOILERS in yesterday’s post, but I don’t think I’ll completelybe able to for the rest of the week. If you haven’t seen Sinners yet,please do so and then come back to read this series!]

On twoliterary predecessors to our favorite character (and one of the most fascinatingstory elements) in the film.

In thepivotal Chapter X of the Narrative of the Lifeof Frederick Douglass (1845), Douglass writes about an influentialencounter with a fellow enslaved man named Sandy Jenkins. The teenaged Douglasshas gotten on the wrong side of a particularly violent enslaver and infamous “slaver-breaker”named Covey, and has temporarily run away from the plantation rather thanrisk a horrific whipping. Sandy, clearly a hoodoo practitioner although Douglassdoes not use the word nor define Sandy as spiritual in any overarching way,gives Douglass “a certain root” which will protect him from whippings ofany kind. Although Douglass doubts its powers, he follows Sandy’s advice and isnever again whipped by Covey, although his own violent resistance to the manmust be accounted as part of the shift as well. That ambiguity leads Douglass towrite that “I was half inclined to think the root to be something morethan I at first had taken it to be,” and in any case he seemingly keeps it withhim, perhaps recognizing that whatever his own beliefs, slavery is a world inwhich broader and more powerful forces than any individual are in play.

Half acentury after Douglass published his narrative, the African American authorCharles Chesnutt developed that last idea much more fully in his wonderfulshort story cycle The ConjureWoman (1899). I said a lot about what makes that book so complex andpowerful inthis post on its first story, “The Goophered Grapevine” (originally publishedinThe Atlantic in 1887). As I discussed in that post, for Chesnuttconjure (a parallel term/concept to hoodoo) is largely symbolic, on twointerconnected levels: for the enslaved people in the stories recounted by thestoryteller character Uncle Julius, people for whom conjure reflects both the horrificand the potentially resistant and even liberatory realities of their lives andworld; and for Julius himself, who weaves his conjure tales in order to achievegoals in his own present, post-Civil War life. Which is to say, Chesnutt usesthe genre of the conjure tale much like he does the genre of plantationfiction—capitalizing on audience expectations, those of Julius’s whiteaudience inside the stories and Chesnutt’s (largely) white readers for them, tooffer a powerful counter-narrative to dominant American perceptions of slavery,race, history, and more.

Toward theend of yesterday’s post, I mentioned that Wonmi Mosaku’s Annie was my wife’sand my favorite character in Sinners. There are lots of layers that makethe character and performance so great, including an incredibly beautiful finalscene that I will most definitely not spoil here. But a big part of it is thatAnnie is a hoodoo practitioner, an element of both her identity and the worldthat her husband Smoke (one of the two Michael B. Jordan twins) initially dismisses(emphasizing instead money and power as the world’s fundamental forces) but thateventually becomes crucial for everyone’s survival once the vampires startdoing their thing. Annie’s knowledge of “haints” and how to fight themcertainly fits with the symbolic and social sides of hoodoo/conjure that we seein Chesnutt’s stories, just as we can read Coogler’s vampires metaphorically tobe sure. But at the same time, these layers to Annie’s character are presentedmatter-of-factly and accepted as such by those around her, reminding us that,like Sandy Jenkins, hoodoo practitioners remained an important part of BlackSouthern communities for centuries. I was so impressed and moved to see thisconjure woman in Coogler’s historical film.

NextSinnersStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

July 14, 2025: AmericanStudying Sinners: Coogler’s Career

[A couplemonths back, my wife and I were blown away by one of the best films either ofus has seen in a long while: Ryan Coogler’s stunning Sinners. I hopeyou’ve all had a chance to check it out already, and if not, that you’ll do soright now and then come back to read this weeklong series of posts inspired bydifferent layers to this phenomenal work!]

On howCoogler’s prior (great) films foreshadowed this masterpiece.

Back inMarch 2018, I ended a weeklong series on Black Panther (2018) with a special weekendpost on Coogler’s film career up to that excellent superhero film.I’ll be following up and expanding on those thoughts in my next two paragraphs,so would ask you to check out that prior post if you would and then come onback for more CooglerStudying.

Welcomeback! One of the most clear throughlines in Coogler’s career has been hisability to make genre films that are also much, much more, and that’sdefinitely true of the ways Sinners is and is not a vampire horrorflick. One of the most impressive aspects of Black Panther, for example,is that its villain, Michael B. Jordan’s ErikKillmonger, is as multilayered and nuanced and even sympathetic as itscomic book hero. It took some extended conversation after our viewing for mywife and I to get to this point, and then I read Outlaw Vern’s phenomenalreview where he expounded on the perspective even further, but I would now saythat the villainous head vampire Remmick in Sinners is an equallycomplex and even in some ways sympathetic bad guy, and at the very least thathe has as much of a case as Killmonger did, both about his own past/heritageand about the world he’s trying to create (if, in both cases, through way moreviolent means than would be ideal). At the very least, both Black Pantherand Sinners feature antagonists who directly and consistently threatenour heroes and yet aren’t easily hated and certainly can’t be dismissed, whichis quite the genre achievement.

Another throughline,and one I discussed a good bit in that prior post as well, is Coogler’s abilityto create wonderful, multilayered female characters within largelymale-centered genres and stories (whether superhero films or boxing/sportsmovies or even the gritty realism of Fruitvale Station). And despite thoseexcellent prior characters, I think it’s very safe to say that a Coogler filmhas never featured a more stunning female character than Wonmi Mosaku’s Annie.I’ll be talking more about layers of her character and role in the film intomorrow’s post, so here I’ll just say that in a film featuring not one but twoMichael B. Jordan performances, a Hailee Steinfeld performance, a Delroy Lindoperformance, and a deservedly-acclaimed performance from the young musicianMiles Caton, it’s Mosaku who is the film’s beating heart. Sounds like a RyanCoogler joint to me!

NextSinnersStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

July 12-13, 2025: Crowd-sourced Rock Responses

[On July 6, 1925, Bill Haley was born. So for thatcentennial I’ve shared blog posts on Haley and other rock ‘n roll pioneers,leading up to this crowd-sourced weekend post featuring recent rock recs!]

First,responses to this week’s posts:

Inresponse to my Chuck Berry & Little Richard post, Jessica Parr sharedon Bluesky, “Love Chuck Berry and that whole era. My late father DJ’ed schooldances in the late 1950s, and had a pretty extensive vinyl collection. Grew uplistening to it with him. That and blues.”

In responseto my Holly & Valens post, Dan R. Morris commented, “So I dida story on this as well. I was thinking Valens hasn't gotten as muchacclaim in anything because he wasn't around very long. How did you becomeentrenched in someone's heart with one or two songs? I feel like that's whenyou decide you like the band and you get their next album.”

Next, acouple prior posts with recent rock recs of my own:

TheKillers, and especially their “The Land of the Free”

Gary ClarkJr., and especially his “This Land”

and MidnightOil, and especially their Resist.

I’d lovesome additional recs from other RockStudiers, y’all!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatrecent rock would you recommend for the weekend post?

July 11, 2025: Rock-y Groundbreakers: Women Who Rock

[On July 6, 1925, Bill Haley was born. So for thatcentennial I’ll share blog posts on Haley and other rock ‘n roll pioneers,leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post featuring recent rock recs!]

Four ofthe many women who helped launch the rock revolution, as highlighted in greatpieces by women journalists and historians:

1)     SisterRosetta Tharpe

2)     Ruth Brown

3)     MemphisMinnie

4)     CarolKaye

Crowd-sourcedpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. So onemore time: what recent rock would you recommend for the weekend post?

July 10, 2025: Rock-y Groundbreakers: Fats Domino

[On July 6, 1925, Bill Haley was born. So for thatcentennial I’ll share blog posts on Haley and other rock ‘n roll pioneers,leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post featuring recent rock recs!]

On a fewiconic moments in the career of a pioneering, legendary rock ‘n roller.

1)     “The Fat Man”: Domino’s first hit under hisdebut recording contract with Lew Chudd’s Imperial Records,co-written with his frequent producer and collaborator (and an influentialartist in his own right) Dave Bartholomew and recorded at Cosimo Matassa’s J&MRecording Studios on Rampart Street, wasn’t just the first rock record tosell a million copies (although it did hit thatgroundbreaking number by 1951). It also embodies rock’s profoundlycross-cultural origins, on so many levels: from Domino’s own French Creoleheritage (his first language was Louisiana Creole) to Matassa’smulti-generational Italian American New Orleans legacy, from Chudd’s childhoodin Toronto and Harlem as the son of Russian Jewish immigrants to AfricanAmerican artist Bartholomew’s time in the US Army Ground Forces Band (anintegrated band despite the army’s segregation in the era) during WWII. It tookall those individuals and all those legacies to make “Fat Man” and get Americanrock music rolling.

2)     “The King”: Over the next couple decadesDomino would record many more hit records and albums, with “Ain’t That a Shame” (1955)and “BlueberryHill” (1956) the two biggest smashes. A February1957 Ebony magazine featuredubbed him (on the cover no less) the “King of Rock ‘n Roll.” But it was anoffhand line from another “King,” more than a decade later, that most potentlyreflects Domino’s status and influence. On July31, 1969, Domino attended Elvis Presley’s first concert at the Las VegasInternational Hotel; during a post-concert press conference, a reporterreferred to Presley as “The King,” and he responded by pointing at Domino andnoting, “No, that’s the real king of rock and roll.” At the same event Elvis tookan iconic picture with Domino, calling him “one of myinfluences from way back.” I’ll have a bit more to say about Elvis and hisinfluence in a couple days; but regardless of any other factors, thisrecognition for Domino from one of the most famous American rockers in historyillustrates just how iconic Fats was within (and beyond) the industry.

3)     Katrina: Domino was known to be one of themost humble and grounded rock stars, and he and his wife Rosemary continued tolive in their home inNew Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward throughout the late 20th centuryand into the first decade of the 21st. Because of Rosemary’s ailinghealth they did not evacuate in the days before Hurricane Katrina hit the city,and in the storm’s chaotic aftermath their home was flooded and Domino andRosemary were feared dead for a couple long days. But it turned outthey had been rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter, and in 2006 and 2007 Dominomade triumphant returns to the city and the music world: first with his 2006 albumAlive and Kickin’, the proceeds from which benefittedTipitina’s Foundation; and then with his last public performance (and first inmany years), a legendary May 19,2007 concert at Tipitina’s. If there had been any doubt that Dominorepresented New Orleans just as much and as well as he does rock ‘n roll, theseculminating iconic moments laid them forever to rest.

Lastgroundbreaker tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatrecent rock would you recommend for the weekend post?

July 9, 2025: Rock-y Groundbreakers: Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens

[On July 6, 1925, Bill Haley was born. So for thatcentennial I’ll share blog posts on Haley and other rock ‘n roll pioneers,leading up to a crowd-sourced weekend post featuring recent rock recs!]

On twoways to separate a forever-linkedpair, and one non-tragic way to pair them.

The firstway I’d separate Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens is found in a prior post: this one, where Iargue that the prominence given to Holly and not to Valens in Don McLean’siconic song “AmericanPie” (1971) is due, at least in part, to the former’s whiteness incontrast to the latter’s Mexican American heritage. I stand by that argument,and would ask you to check out that prior post before I say a bit more aboutthis famously tragic pair of pioneers.

Welcomeback! Whether you agree with my take on McLean’s song or not, there’s nodisputing that these two young musicians came from profoundly different heritages,not only ethnically but also and even more relevantly musically. Buddy Holly (1936-59)was born into a musicalfamily in Depression-era Lubbock, Texas,and grew up influenced by the countrymusic world that they were part of, including listening to the Grand OleOpry radio program. Ritchie Valens (1941-59) was born into a Mexican Americanfamily in California’s San FernandoValley, and grew up listening to and making with his community traditional Mexicanmariachi music, as well as learning the flamenco guitar that had made itsway from Spain to Hispanic America. As that last hyperlinked piece puts it, thoseinfluences made Valens a pioneer of Chicano rock, while Holly might best bedescribed through the country-rock hybrid knownas rockabilly. Both of those heritages and influences were unquestionablypart of early rock, but, to echo and extend the point of my earlier post, Ibelieve that our collective narratives have tended to prioritize country/rockabilly,making it that much more important for us to add Valens and the legacy of mariachimusic in this era (and beyond).

Despitethose important differences, however, there are also important ways to linkHolly and Valens, even if we leave aside their shared tragic endpoint. To citeone striking example: Valens’s youthful successes are well known, as he signed a record dealjust after his 17th birthday and by the end of that year was performingon the Dick Clark Showand at the ApolloTheater; but Holly was an equally impressive teen prodigy, starting his first bandat the age of 17, openingfor Elvis Presley while still just 18, and signing hisown record deal at 19. Popular music has long been defined by teen idols, butI feel that sometimes the narratives suggest that that trend evolved over time,or at least became more pronounced in eras like the 80s(for example). But in truth, some of early rock ‘n roll’s most prominent and popularartists were teenagers, immediately establishing this evolving genre as notonly directed at teen audiences, but frequently created by teen artists aswell. A story that we can’t tell without the forever linked pair of Buddy Hollyand Ritchie Valens.

Nextgroundbreaker tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatrecent rock would you recommend for the weekend post?