The Heat and Hassle of a Burning Whig

“The fatal mistake we make is looking for a paradise that endures...This obsession with what lasts causes us to overlook many a fleeting paradise.”― Andreï Makine

Today is release day for the new Afghan Whigs record, which as I discussed last week is one of the best in their catalog, with incredible songwriting, production and attitude. I find it always so heartening when a band that has been around for so long can still make music that is so vital…so inspired…music that goes against the paradigm of “the early stuff is always the best.” How Do You Burn? is just a great, classic Rock n Roll record.

I had the opportunity to ask front man and friend Greg Dulli a few questions around this auspicious occasion…

David K: “How Do You Burn” is coming out today, Sept 9th and it is the 9th record of the Afghan Whigs.  How do you see it fitting into the legacy of the band’s recordings, besides being the shiniest new chapter?

Greg Dulli: I look at records as documents of their time. I can look back and remember who and where I was at the time and in this case, it was in the middle of an apocalyptic science fiction movie.

DK: The record’s production glistens.  Your voice has never seemed better recorded and rides against some big arrangements and at times pretty gnarly guitar sounds.  What was different about recording this record?

GD: I have now been working with Christopher Thorn for 8 years. He's a real stickler for vocal takes and it's made me a better singer.

Plus he's steadily pushed up my vocal volume over the years.

DK: You spent a lot of time in Joshua Tree making this record. How does place affect you as an artist? And if it doesn’t affect you at all, what did you learn during your extended stay in the desert?

GD: The desert allows me to unpack my thoughts and hear them without the noise of the city. It's been a fertile creative environment for me. I've been recording in Joshua Tree for 20 years now and this is the reason I continue to go.

DK: Word has it that you have agreed to record a song for the Lou Reed covers record that Bill Bentley is putting together. What song did you choose to do? And why?

GD: I chose Street Hassle for the melody and the challenge of turning it into a 3-4 minute pop song.

DK: I know you listen to radio stations from around the world....for the novice international surfer, can you enlighten us on how you access all the stations, which ones are your favorites...and are there any shows you just cannot miss?

GD: TuneIn Radio has virtually every radio station under the sun. From almost every country on Earth. I used to love this station called

A Net out of Antarctica. They played obscure folk music but it has sadly gone off the air. These days some of my favorites are:

-FIP Radio- A Parisian radio station that has one of the most eclectic playlists I've ever heard. Just incredible.

-WEVL- Memphis Community radio with some great shows like: The Deep Blues Show, In The Basement, Into the Deep and The 1st Church Of Rock!

Three excellent jazz stations

-KCSM (San Mateo, CA)

-KMHD (Portland, OR)

-WBGO (Newark, NJ)

-Ambient Sleeping Pill (Enough said)

DK: What are you reading these days? What is on your night table?

GD: I just picked up The Magus by John Fowles

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See the Most Notable Artworks in the Royal Family’s Collection

There are those private spaces that showcase incredible art out there in the world. The main attraction about going to the Bohemian Club in San Francisco is not about hanging with the membership of men, but to witness the incredible museum that has amassed over time. And then, there is the Queen’s collection…. And if you are feeling queen-specific today, Billboard just published a list of all the musicians the Queen knighted.

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Portrait of the Artist as a Grown Man On T. S. Eliot’s later years

This is a great weekend read about the man behind one of the most famous and beguiling poems of all time. I love this excerpt from the article: “The poet had a lot of life to live after 1922 (when Wasteland was published). In those forty-three years he converted to Anglo-Catholicism; engaged in a seventeen-year-long epistolary extramarital romance with the American drama teacher Emily Hale; separated from Vivien; became an editor at Faber and Faber; saw Vivien committed to a mental hospital (where she died almost a decade later); published one of the century’s great religious lyrics (“Ash-Wednesday”) and one of its great poetic sequences (Four Quartets); won the Nobel Prize in Literature; and, in 1957, got married again, this time to his much-younger secretary, Esmé “Valerie” Fletcher. Still, if you see The Waste Land as the pinnacle of modernism and of Eliot’s achievement, then there’s an inevitable sense of anticlimax to the post-Waste Land life.”

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Asafo flags: How the Fante of West Africa used its flags to export cultural identity

“The flags were used to communicate insightful Fante cultural values and preserve proverbs handed over from generation to generation.”

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‘We nearly threw them out’: the photographs of Andy Warhol that sat in a cupboard for 50 years

Interesting story written by the wife of the photographer who had the photos in question including insights on the factory scene by someone who did not feel like she fit in there.

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November Night

BY ADELAIDE CRAPSEY

Listen. .

With faint dry sound,

Like steps of passing ghosts,

The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees

And fall.

Amaze

BY ADELAIDE CRAPSEY

I know

Not these my hands

And yet I think there was

A woman like me once had hands

Like these.

Triad

BY ADELAIDE CRAPSEY

These be

Three silent things:

The falling snow. . the hour

Before the dawn. . the mouth of one

Just dead.

Trapped

BY ADELAIDE CRAPSEY

Well and

If day on day

Follows, and weary year

On year. . and ever days and years. .

Well?

Photo by Brooke DiDonato

***This newsletter is dedicated to my Dad, whose birthday is tomorrow (miss you,Dad), and to my nephew Andy, whose birthday is on the following day.