Jordan Swartz-The Rad Times #8

I’ve been working through R.E.M.s catalogue over the last few weeks in hopes of gaining some insight. As a child of the ‘90s you couldn’t escape them; tv, radio, soundtracks, and magazines, but now I feel that their legacy isn’t as outsized as it should be. There’s bands I barely remember from that same time that are having cultural comebacks and social media attention, while R.E.M. essentially invented alternative rock and has all but disappeared from public consciousness.
If you need something to listen to this week put on one of those first five R.E.M. records and approach it like a band you’ve never heard before, I bet you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Thanks for hanging!
Be good to each other.

I start a lot of tv shows but finish very few, English Teacher is not one of them. The pilot grabbed my attention right away and I anticipate the new one each week. Brian Jordan Alvarez, the shows creator and lead character, is new to me, but he has been working steadily for the last 15 years, with a seemingly large internet presence. From the first episode the cast was in sync and had a great report, the writing is well done and often plays against assumptions and stereotypes, while the show expertly navigates and cuts to the core of the modern balancing act that is teaching in a public school.

In the summer of 2008 a friends band had a show fall through in the DC area so I said they could play my house. With the last minute change only three people showed up, one being a skinny German exchange student (Marin if you’re out there, I hope you’re doing well) in a PG.99 shirt. The shirt told us everything we needed to know, a signifier that even though he was from almost 4,000 miles away and none of us knew who he was, he was one of us. He ended up staying the rest of the day and grilling with us and soon after he moved into the house I lived in with my roommates and stayed the rest of the summer. More than once when we were sitting on the couch together he would look around the messy row house and in a thick accent say “all because of a t shirt.” So while I fall more in the Groucho Marx camp, subcultures do have their place.

Following World War II the Soviets controlled all forms of art; literature, poetry, film, and especially music. Anything Western was banned and even works by those who had left were often banned as they were considered traitors and their works no longer supported Soviet ideals. In this crack down on media, as always happens, a black market grew. With vinyl not readily accessible they turned to used X-rays from local hospitals for their bootleg recordings. Originating in the port town of St. Petersburg, the practice and the records quickly spread. In the age of digital music everywhere at anytime, there’s something magical about bone music.

I’m late to the game but I was excited to see that Claire Dederer has a new book building on her Paris Review essay from a few years back. Dederer’s essay deals with the ever more prevalent question of can you separate the art from the artist? It’s something I often grapple with and have built my own arbitrary walls around. She’s a great writer and I look forward to seeing her build out this topic in what has been described as part essay and part treatise.

A series of collages for The Parker Hotel is now live on my site. Using historical photographs, documents, and objects, I created a series of nine collages that will hang on the property in Parker, CO, as well as be used in various pieces of collateral.

Wood panel collages from my series “Cemetery Talk” are available now in my store.