Def Jam and the Last Days of the Record Labels

The forces behind Def Jam Records and, consequently, Rizzoli’s new tribute to the iconic rap music label Def Jam Recordings, have taken to saying this was the last true record label. This is, in part, both correct and incorrect.

Read the last Popdose on the new series If You Like.

Rick Rubin started Def Jam with an open-field approach, where anything could fill that space provided it was something that was going to punch his joy button. That meant anything and everything was up for grabs, submitting a range from one of rap’s first pop-crossover superstars L.L ...

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Sugar Dreams: The Art of Will Cotton

Music and visual artists have a way of becoming co-conspirators. For a moment we’ll forget artists who came up primarily as album cover designers and focus on those who worked independent of the industry and somehow found themselves inside it.

Read the last Popdose on '33 Revolutions Per Minute,' about protest songs.

Think of the Very Special Christmas music compilations and you’ll likely see Keith Haring’s dancing outline figurines. Your mind’s eye thinks of Madonna and probably will do so based on an image photographed by Herb Ritts. Duran Duran had Patrick Nagel, and what of ...

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Our Bieber Who Art in Heaven…the Cycle of Tween Fandom

It reads in Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun.” This is a line of argument that is hard to put past a smitten tween-age girl. To her, the latest pop icon is the greatest, absolute and most undeniably awesome singer/performer that has ever been, never to be surpassed until, shockingly, they are. To condense this concept down a little, let us just say that Justin Timberlake begat Zac Efron (sort of), which begat the Jonas Brothers (kinda), which begat Robert Pattinson (maybe, RPattz, maybe), which leaves it to Bieber.

Read the last Popdose on the new Music ...

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Blowing ‘Rogue’

During the week of Sept. 12, Joe McGinniss gave Sarah Palin the one thing no one else ever could, whether he expected to or not. One has to assume not.

Read more nonfiction out this week with the new John Lennon biography.

With the “premiere” of his book The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin (the actual book is out today) as excerpts parsed out in Garry Trudeau’s comic strip Doonesbury, a clash of the old and the new comes into sharp relief. McGinniss, a renowned investigative journalist, famously rented a house next to the Palins in Alaska ...

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The Lasting Appeal of the Silver Surfer

The summer of 2011 is liable to go down as the one in which comic book moviemakers had to second guess themselves. DC Comics and parent company Warner Bros. shot relative blanks with Green Lantern, just as they had a year before with Jonah Hex. Marvel did marginally well with Captain America and Thor, neither of which are serious contenders for individual franchises but both being crucial parts of next year’s The Avengers. After all, that was the primary point of those movies existing—to lead the movie-going geek into this next big thing without having them explode into ...

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Popdose: Neil Peart’s Far And Away

Neil Peart has somehow managed to become many of the things he has previously stated he never wanted to be. Of the three members of the band Rush he has been, cumulatively, the least outgoing. It is, according to his personal account, just how it goes for the life of an introvert, and that perspective has been etched into rock music stone in the lyrics of “Limelight,” a track from the band’s most famous entry, Moving Pictures:

“I can’t pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend.”

Read the last Popdose column on Go the F**k to Sleep ...

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Popdose: Rock-a-bye Baby, Shut the F**k Up

Parody, by its commonly perceived nature, tends to mock the subject it mirrors, but the best examples also express a love for, and kinship with, the mocked. For example, even though Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles rips into violence, race relations, sexual tensions of the early ’70s and the dangerous business of bean ingestion, the story remains a western in an oddball way. The characters aren’t blasting on the form as such, but on the characters populating it.

Read Popdose's last column on Bob Mould.

There are thousands of examples of parody gone wrong. In the late ’80s and ...

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Popdose: ‘Rockers and Rollers’ Meets Expectations—But is That a Good Thing?

I’m nervous about summing up a book that heavily references various vehicles with the line, “your mileage may vary,” but there it is. That’s essentially how I feel about Rockers and Rollers: A Full-Throttle Memoir by Brian Johnson of AC/DC, even if the inherent pun makes me look like a rank amateur.

Looking for more music books that get the good gossip? Check out Neil Strauss' Everyone Loves You When You're Dead.

The problem is, I suppose, I’m not the prime target audience for this book. That audience consists of the rabid fan base AC ...

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Popdose: You’re A Stand-Up Guy, Charlie Brown

Fantagraphics Books rolls on with their hardcover library collection The Complete Peanuts, with the latest installment spotlighting 1979 and 1980. Charlie Brown and I go way back, and the longer I live, the more I realize Charlie Brown was not a put-upon child, but a middle-aged man. Furthermore, Charlie Brown is me.

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The evidence: bald? Yes, we have no follicles. How about an irrational attraction to redheads? Check. Do I talk to dogs, and do they talk back to me? Yes and no; dogs do not talk, you ...

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Popdose: For Sucker Punch, Nothing Ever Goes As Planned

Here’s how it probably was expected to go down:  superstar director Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) would bring his first original screen story to life with the willing assistance of production company Legendary Pictures and studio Warner Bros., a phalanx of digital artists and a pop culture nerd’s wish list. The combination of live-action Japanese anime tropes, steampunk design and young Hollywood starlets seemed like an easy puzzle to put together, a precise “flap A into slot 1” procedure.

Hey, Tina Fey has a book out. See Popdose's Top 10 Favorite Tina Fey moments. 

Cut to opening weekend ...

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