In the Beloit Daily News

Beloit Memorial High School Hall of Fame, here I come!

 

Author named recipient of BMHS honor – Beloit Daily News: News: beloit, beloit memorial high school, bmhs, honor, hall of fame.

via Author named recipient of BMHS honor – Beloit Daily News: News: beloit, beloit memorial high school, bmhs, honor, hall of fame.

Moving the Miami Herald

I told my son that the plan is to turn one of my alma maters, The Miami Herald, into a casino, and he busted up laughing. Even a 10-year-old gets the irony. The Herald was overall a great place to work. It won’t be the same in Doral.

 

Miami Herald Prepares to Leave Bastion on the Bay – NYTimes.com.

via Miami Herald Prepares to Leave Bastion on the Bay – NYTimes.com.

Queens of Noise Picked by Publishers Weekly

Influential trade publication Publisher’s Weekly named Queens of Noise one of the  top 10 music books of the spring, right after Burt Bacharach, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Richard Hell. Full text below. This came out quite a while ago, but I was on the road and never got around to publishing it. The Runaways history is scheduled to be published July 9; you can preorder it now.

Spring 2013 Announcements: Music: The Many Sounds of Music
By Mark Rotella |
Jan 25, 2013

“Never be ashamed to write a melody that people remember,” Burt Bacharach, composer and music producer, once said.
Bacharach, the height of whose career spanned from the ’50s through the ’80s, wrote songs that many still hum, and in his book Anyone Who Had a Heart: My Life in Music, he promises to share anecdotes of his life, writing songs for Carole Bayer Sager, Neil Diamond, Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield, Elvis Costello, as well as such film songs as “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head,” from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He’ll also talk about his many marriages, and the suicide of his daughter Nikki (who he had with actress Angie Dickinson). Along the lines of the pop standard, Paul Anka discusses his own melodies in My Way: An Autobiography, the title referring to the song lyric he wrote for Frank Sinatra. St. Martin’s is hoping to tap into his book-buying fan base—listeners who can sing along to “Diana” and “Put Your Head on My Shoulders.”

Passing the Torch

The music journalists in yesterday’s Think Local Write Global panel at LMU covered a range of media: daily newspaper, radio, blog, social media. They were experts in K-pop, hip-hop, mariachi, feminist punk, and Touareg. What they had in common is they’re based in LA, and inspired by the multitudinous, er, lay of the land in this city. It was the annual installment of the Syntext/Creative Writing program’s LAy of the LAnd symposium, after all.

As curator and co-moderator (with Ruben Martinez), I appreciated the respect Betto Arcos, Oliver Wang, Lorraine Ali, Drew Tewksbury, Allison Wolfe, and Rebecca Haithcoat showed each other — and also their willingness to openly disagree. When Ali and Wang faced off on the issue of whether critics are still critics if they only write positive things — the freelancer said yes, the music editor said no — it was a great learning moment for my journalism students in the crowd. I worried, for a brief time, that all the talk of diminishing expectations, financially and aesthetically, was going to bum the next generation out. But the writers rallied for a sincerely optimistic closing, telling the students that a change is surely coming — and they are poised to be the leaders.

KXLU at Noon: Music Criticism

Ruben Martinez and I will be on KXLU today at noon, talking about the 4:30 LAy of the LAnd symposium, Think Local, Write Global: The L.A. Music Critic in the 21st Century.

The L.A. Music Critic Panels

Curated by me!

LAy of the LAnd Flyer copy

Bob Hope’s Lautner house for sale

Bob Hope once said about the house that genius architect John Lautner built for him: “At least when they come down from Mars, they’ll know where to go.” The Martians can now buy their landing pad: the concrete Palm Springs palace is for sale. For $50 million.

 

 

via Bob Hope’s John Lautner house for sale at $50 million – latimes.com.