Collapse Board at 7: The 25 Most Read Articles
Collapse Board celebrated its seventh birthday yesterday. To celebrate, here’s the 25 most read articles over those seven years. Enjoy! 1. Shut up about Kreayshawn being Racist – Kelly McClure In the last few days I’ve gotten into two very intense debates via Facebook about whether or not Kreayshawn is a racist. Naturally Facebook would be […]
A knot in my heart: The Raincoats at the Feminist Library Summer Benefit, London, 2 July 2016
Photo by Amber Bateup. It’s hard to talk about The Raincoats. I’m writing this from a teahouse in London, trying to figure out why that is. I can’t find the right phrase to describe the knot in my heart that tightens when I think about them. It’s the kind of knot that holds you together. […]
The Worst in Music of 2015
The name “Viet Cong” So this year, we watched as a band named after an off-hand racist comment rose on the charts. They’ll no doubt crop up on bunches of more positive lists this month, even after colleges like Oberlin barred them from playing. Sang Nguyen, a writer at Impose and also a second-generation Vietnamese-American, […]
Montage of Heck | “undercooked and over-thought”
By Alexandra Duguid Since the suicide of Kurt Cobain in 1994, he and his band have always been mystified, covered in conspiracy, touted and disparaged. With exciting new footage, audio and illustrations of and created by Cobain, film maker Brett Morgen’s Montage Of Heck promised a demystifying of the Great Cobain Myth. The film explores […]
Kurt Cobain died 21 years ago – so here are 21 of his best songs (with actual songs attached)
I love livenirvana.com sometimes. Many thanks to John George, and also Mattia Cuda, for filling in the blanks. I’ve altered a couple of suggestions to make it work. 1. That one most people know if they know more than one Nirvana song 2. That one that ‘changed the world’ (NOTE: ought to place this lower down […]
Kurt Cobain died 21 years ago – so here are 21 of his best songs
1. That one most people know if they know more than one Nirvana song 2. That one that ‘changed the world’ (NOTE: ought to place this lower down the list) 3. Some obscure one from In Utero to show we know our stuff 4. Some even obscurer one from the ‘rarities’ box set to placate the […]
“You don’t have to be an activist to want to make a change” | Students on authenticity
I should preface this list by stating that authenticity in popular music is mutable (if it exists), that it is utterly dependent upon genre, time and place (if it exists), that it is defined in relation to its ‘inauthentic’ counterpart (if it exists), that it is a construct with dubious links all the way back […]
What I did last night instead of seeing Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks play live
I watched a few episodes from season 3 of The West Wing and thought, not for the first time, this is the cast of Friends moved to the White House. I wondered whether there was even the remotest possibility Stephen and his band could be even a 10th as good as this cover version would indicate – and […]
In Search of Nirvana: Why Nirvana: The True Story Could Never Be ‘True’
In my book Nirvana: The True Story (2006), I undertake an autoethnographical approach to biography, attempting to impart an understanding of my chosen subject—the rock band Nirvana—via discussion of my own experiences. On numerous occasions, I veer off into tangential asides, frequently using extensive footnotes to explain obscure musical references. Personal anecdotes are juxtaposed with […]
Daniel Johns turns ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ into a Coldplay song
Wow. I don’t know which is worse. The idea of Daniel Johns (the Chris Martin soundalike guy from national embarrassment Silverchair) covering ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ at a triple j party, the actuality of Daniel Johns (the whiny, wallpaper, Chris Martin soundalike guy from national embarrassment Silverchair) covering ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ with harp and […]
