The Arts Fuse Newsletter, January 18
From The Editor's Desk:
A couple of rock previews this week: Blake Maddux salutes the arrival of The Salt Collective and Paul Robicheau notes a special reunion concert featuring O Positive and Three Colors.
Plenty of incisive book reviews: Vince Czyz celebrates the reissue of a Guy Davenport essay collection, Dan Kennedy recommends a volume that explores how private equity firms are squeezing the life out of newsrooms as greedy owners cash in, and Steve Provizer is impressed by The Soundies, an authoritative book on jukebox films of the 1940s.
As for television, Peg Aloi writes that HBO's True Detective: Night Country is terrific.
—Bill Marx, Editor-in-Chief
Book Review: Jack Kerouac’s “Pic” — Last But Not Least
By David Daniel
In On the Road, Jack Kerouac voiced a longing to be an “other.” He achieves this transfiguration in Pic Pic by Jack Kerouac.
Concert Preview: The Salt Collective — A Multipronged Octet
By Blake Maddux
A single listen to The Salt Collective’s album disabused me of my initial skepticism. The recording is as enjoyable and interesting as one would hope for from an effort featuring this gang of eight.
Concert Preview: O Positive and Three Colors — Together Again with Purpose
By Paul Robicheau
O Positive and Three Colors will reunite at the Paradise Rock Club this Friday for “With a Little Help from My Friends: a Benefit Concert for a Friend in Need.”
Book Review: “The Geography of the Imagination” — Longing for Something Lost
By Vincent Czyz
Touted as “perhaps the last great American polymath,” Guy Davenport had a singular mind; never was an artist more deserving of the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius grant.”
Book Review: ‘Hedged’ — How Private Equity Destroyed the Newspaper Business
By Dan Kennedy
Newspapers are still our most reliable source of local journalism. Private equity, though, is squeezing the life out of newsrooms as greedy owners cash in.
Book Review: “The Soundies” — A Definitive Study of the Musical Film Shorts of the ’40s
By Steve Provizer
Author Mark Cantor has been the go-to guy for jazz film for decades: this authoritative book solidifies his position.
Television Review: “True Detective: Night Country” — In the Bleak Midwinter
By Peg Aloi
When the identities of the guilty are finally revealed in this new season of a superb True Detective, it is terrifying and glorious.
