Fluxpod

Here's the second half of my hangout episode with Sean T. Collins, which was originally only available for Patreon subscribers. We talk about a lot of things in this one, including Primal Scream, Peaches, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Cake, Moby, Deftones, Kenny Rogers, Kiss, The Killers, Benny Mardones, Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters, Live, Helmet, and Hozier. For more premium episodes, including the current Sonic Youth audio essay series, subscribe to the Fluxblog Patreon! 

American painter, musician, and internet radio personality Jake Longstreth is here to talk about Robert Pollard and Guided By Voices' body of work from the late '80s through 2004. If you're not really into GBV I promise you this will still be pretty entertaining!

Molly O'Brien from And Introducing and Rebecca Alter from Vulture join me to discuss the past, present, and future of fast food/pop star collaborations. We talk about BTS, J Balvin, and Travis Scott's meals with McDonald's, Shawn Mendes' Chipotle burrito bowl, and Mariah Carey's cookies, and game out what other musicians and chains should do in the future. 

Vanity Fair writer Erin Vanderhoof is on the show to chat about the post-Brexit wave of indie bands in the U.K. and Ireland, including Black Midi, Courting, Shame, Yard Act, Legss, etc. You can read my article about the emerging scene – which is largely focused on Squid, Drying Cleaning and Black Country, New Road - over at NPR. Erin and I recorded a whole other episode that gets into Taylor Swift, Steely Dan, Stereolab, Jonas Brothers, rockabilly, and a whole lot of other things that you can hear as a Patreon exclusive. 

This episode, which is entirely about Billy Corgan and The Smashing Pumpkins from 1991 through 1999, features Julia Gfrörer, the writer and artist of the graphic novels Vision, Laid Waste, and Black Is the Color, and co-host of the podcast Lament Configuration. You can find her t-shirt designs on Threadless and visit her Etsy shop.

This week I have Jack Shepherd of the Babysitters Club Club on to go deep on R.E.M. - we discuss 30 songs from all over their catalog, at least one song from each of the 15 albums! If this is not enough for you, there's yet more of this as a bonus episode on the Patreon.

This episode is a sequel to my appearance on Jesse Hawken's show Junk Filter in which we went deep on Steely Dan. This time Jesse and I go EVEN DEEPER by focusing entirely on songs, with discussions of 17 classics including "Show Biz Kids," "Deacon Blues," "Chain Lightning," "Josie," "FM," "Pretzel Logic," "Reelin' in the Years," "Black Cow," and "Don't Take Me Alive."

This is an episode of Jesse Hawken's podcast Junk Filter in which I guest starred to spend a little over an hour talking about Steely Dan. I'm featuring it here both to get you to check out Jesse's show and hear me on it, but also because the next episode of Fluxpod will feature Jesse and we're going to go further down the Steely Dan rabbit hole. It's time to get Danpilled!

This episode features the veteran music critic and academic Eric Weisbard, author of the new book Songbooks: The Literature of American Popular Music. This conversation covers his career from early days in the San Francisco critic scene of the late 80s/early 90s, his work as a key writer at Spin in the mid-90s, his experience co-editing the influential Spin Alternative Record Guide from 1995, his time at the Village Voice and the EMP museum, creating and running the Pop Conference for many years, and his career as a professor at the University of Alabama. If you're interested in the culture and history of music criticism, you're gonna want to listen to this one.

This week's episode is a clip show intended as a starting point for new listeners. If you'd like to get someone into the show, this is something you can pass along! I'd appreciate it if you did. 

Here's a run down of the segments in this collection – each clip is around 5-12 minutes or so. 

• Heather Havrilesky on Fleetwood Mac
• Nick Sylvester on flubbing a session gathering material for Beyoncé's Lemonade
• Brittany Spanos on Madonna and how pop rejects its own history
• Cates Holderness on the surprising popularity of Hozier on Tumblr
• Molly O'Brien and Chris Wade on party rocking, LMFAO, and uncle magic
• Trevor from Champagne Sharks on how Eminem has aged very badly
• Maria Sherman on how BTS broke big in the US and became the new top boy band
• Rob Sheffield on the similarities of Pavement and Sade
• Sean T. Collins on Guns N' Roses