Joe Bonomo's Blog, page 5

Play This Book Loud: Noisy Essays

My new book Play This Book Loud: Noisy Essays is out in two months with University of Georgia Press in the Crux Series. I’m super grateful for these folk who took an early listen and weighed in:

Play This Book Loud is a tribute to a life spent obsessing over rock, the louder the better, and makes turning up the volume seem like a heroic quest. Joe Bonomo evokes the memories buried in the music, from the Kingsmen to the Cramps, from Joey Ramone to Margo Price, from Dick Clark to Walter Benjamin.

—R...

What do you do when the world's wrong?

The Grande Ballroom, Detroit, in disrepair in 2012

In July of 2002 I was day-drinking at the Greenpoint Tavern in Brooklyn. The previous week my buddy Steve and I had hit the Siren Music Festival out at Coney Island—a long, fun day drinking at Ruby’s with the Fleshtones’ drummer Bill Milhizer, soaking up the sun and breezes, and catching a hell of a lineup including the Donnas, the Mooney Suzuki, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. At dusk. Steve and I, drunk and sunburned, took the Q train back to Bedford Aven...

Only time can write a song

“1974 is a lot different than 1970.” So remarked Pat Thomas in a conversation with Doug Yule reprinted in the latest issue of Maggot Brain. Thomas was referring to when Yule, who’d replaced John Cale in Velvet Underground, reunited with Lou Reed in ‘74 for Reed’s Sally Can’t Dance album and subsequent tour. “I hadn’t really followed Lou’s career [at that time],” Yule remarked, adding dryly, “But I know the year before I was with him, he was in his blonde Nazi phase.”

I read this exchange as I’m r...

All that I need

Among the pleasures in crate digging is coming across a single that I know nothing about. Last week I was at a favorite joint (Record Wonderland in Roselle, Illinois) wrist-deep in the dollar-45 bin when I was stopped by the bright orange label above. Neither HOB nor Cross Jordan Singers rang a bell, but I took a chance. Back home, I treated the single to a round of Spin Clean and then ran the track through an Audacity carwash. Though not all of the pops and clicks were buffed out, nothing could...

Can you feel it coming?

During the first week on my Writing Arts Criticism class, the students and I listen to a traditional version of “The Star Spangled Banner,” giving the ‘ol college try of attempting to hear with fresh ears a song that’s familiar and unsurprising, like the weather, or our own bodies, something that we end up taking for granted. Then we listen to several very different covers of the song: an acoustic performance by Victory Boyd; Jim Hendrix scorching the earth at Woodstock; and an arrangement in wh...

What'cha doin' downtown?

Born in 1952 in Queens, New York, Andy Shernoff has witnessed New York City’s decades-long metamorphosis first hand—as a ‘zine writer, a Lower East Side proto-punk, an elder statesman and witness to the aught years gentrification, and, of late, as a Hudson Vally escapee peering down from above the fray.

I won’t dare to take on the merits and demerits of gentrification here, in so modest a space, yet what’s clear is that the metamorphoses of New York City in the last three or so decades has fundam...

Still no time for the blues

“I’ve gotten my teeth chipped from people who think it’s okay to slam shit in my face and tackle me. I’ve stepped on a lot of broken glass. I’ve been air punching and caught a nail in my fist from the ceiling. I’ve bruised the fuck out of my knees, and will probably have really bad knees in 20 years.”

Holding forth is Orville Bateman Neeley III. He made these remarks a decade ago ago now, so his scars have only deepened. His band OBN III popped up on Shuffle the other day. I hadn’t listened or th...

See what’s right, see what’s there

After visiting my dying father in Maryland, scrambling with my brothers and my sister and my mom to assess and meet the thousand mind- and soul-numbing details of planning a funeral mass and an entombment, laying my dad to rest on New Year’s Eve, flying home, and continuing to attend, frustratingly from afar, to my mom’s needs, all while grieving, I naturally caught a wicked head cold, which has only added insult to injury. Amy and I are both laid up, but coming around. As the spring semester of...

Philip James Bonomo, 1930-2024

In 1959, the folk singer Pete Seeger wrote “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, marrying eight verses of the third chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes to a simple, earnest melody. The song first appeared in 1962 (as “To Everything There is a Season”) on the Limeliters’ Folk Matinee album, and then later that year on Seeger’s The Bitter and the Sweet. The average music fan—the average human being—knows “Turn! Turn! Turn!” best through the Byrds’ version, which hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in Dec...

Some stray thoughts on the holidays

Because of several circumstances, this year’s holidays are proving tough for me. They are no doubt tough for many others. I’ve written during the last several years about Christmas, family, and home and how those have been affected by where I’ve chosen to live, the decisions I’ve made, and the eerie silence of the pandemic. They’re hopefully relevant to others, so I’ve gathered them here. Here’s hoping the coming days and weeks bring you and yours peace, calm, and gratitude.

Laying low raises som...