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After some much needed holiday recovery and life hurling snowballs directly at our faces, your favorite cultural repository is here to guide you through the cultural hailstorm and provide laughs you (probably) desperately need. There’s been brainstorming, there’s been procrastinating, but most of all, there’s been a decision that this month’s theme will be “lore”. Perhaps used almost *too* widely on the internet at this point, but isn’t that our niche? We’re focusing on personal lore i.e., the things that made us, well, us, and how it’s reflected in the lens we digest content through. And even if we are giving this word the emotional labor or trauma bond treatment (overusing and in the completely wrong capacity) we simply do not care because it’s still content baby. Thank you, dear readers, for allowing us to bring our portable fan to the cultural hailstorm party. Two people with Leo placements writing about their personal lore? Groundbreaking. Enjoy below :)
Currently Consuming
Lineup Announcements
Unfortunately being a festival girlie is a building block of my personal lore. Its origins can be traced back to circa 2007 and scouring the internet for lineup announcements while making playlists on iTunes. Again, sister to unfiltered internet access. It was further developed by basically bamboozling my family into going to Bonnaroo. And deeply solidified after rolling for the first time during LCD Soundsystem at Lollapalooza. What can I say? The joie de vivre needed to really enjoy being in a crowd while listening to an artist with whom you’ve formed a parasocial emotional attachment to is coursing through my veins. This time of the year somehow makes this feeling pump harder with a new lineup announcement seemingly everyday.
As typical rivals do, Bonnaroo and Coachella released theirs on the same day and they could not be more unalike. Last year, the former basically shit house music everyday, and now the latter is copying that same model. Bonnaroo has returned to its roots to an extent, while having a little too much drum n’ bass for my liking. Sorry to the wooks and pashmina bros, but I have a sense of rhythm, can throw ass, and don’t like to be scared by whoever is on the decks unless it’s dirty techno. Unfortunately, Bonnaroo also lost to its rival this year with the confirmation of Frank Ocean headlining. I am literally screaming, crying, and throwing up. His piece in my personal lore puzzle is a big one. Yuuuugeeee even. I share a birthday with Channel Orange and was actively on tumblr when he posted the now infamous letter. I left a pregame in my prime sophomore year Hot Girl Era when Blonde dropped. I genuinely receive texts from friends when Frank is covered or remixed at shows because my love is so known and strong. Words cannot do justice to what this set could do to me, even without psychedelics. With the rumors of a house-inspired album, I’ve realized that either way, we win. Can you imagine Blonde remixed as a house set? I would die.
Smaller festivals have announced their lineups too like Boston Calling, Bottlerock Napa, and Shaky Knees. I adore this size of festival because it’s less stressful and the lineup really shows the brand the organizers are trying to cultivate. Bottlerock usually leans a little older and rock/indie, Boston Calling has acts you’ve never heard of and not in a good way (much like Boston as an entity 🙂), and Shaky Knees is all rock and trying to be Atlanta’s version of Riot Fest. Truthfully, I could write an essay on the attempted ethos of each popular midsize festival. But with all these announcements, I’ve noticed a few patterns: Boom-stomp-clap is making a comeback in a big way (see: The Lumineers, Noah Kahan), legacy female rock acts are finally having their moment that I hope doesn’t go away, and the house bubble has officially burst meaning the cross-over of electronic into all lineups isn’t quite happening anymore. Old people with money, you win. Electronic music obviously isn’t going anywhere, but the midsize festivals this year really doubled-down on their branding and didn’t book a DJ or two like previous years. If you're not a festival or live music person, I totally get it. That, like, kinda sucks…but, like, I get it! I respect the hell out of you for knowing your boundaries and yourself. But being surrounded by people who have connected with an artist’s music in the same way as you is a spiritual experience and I cannot wait for what the feeling 2023 brings.
Broken Record Pod
Apologies for unintentionally creating a musical motif within our already established theme, but it felt right to talk about this podcast when considering the crossroads formed between personal lore and Rick Rubin’s semi-current viral 60 Minutes moment. Broken Record with Rick Rubin, first airing in 2018, is a show where he interviews everyone from Missy Elliot to James Taylor to Beach House. It might have one of my favorite podcast taglines, “liner notes for the digital age.” Although the show is backed by the most annoying neo-philosophical, remote-work hating figure, Malcolm Gladwell, he takes a back seat and it truly is Rick’s show. Yes, the argument can be made that Rick is simply a white man with confidence who got himself into this position. And perhaps that is super fucking annoying. But also, perhaps, is that opinion without really diving into the history of Rick’s career. He’s produced some of the best albums of all time like 99 Problems, Californiacation, and Yeezus. This podcast feels like a peek into what being in the studio might feel like with him- great questions, creative banter, and personal anecdotes that support the creative process. He never lets his storied career get in the way of the interviewee and has a keen ability to meet them where they’re at. It’s clear in each episode that he’s done his homework and is well-versed in the entire landscape of music. I’ve listened to episodes with Kaytranada and Neil Young that elicited the same feelings of connection and appreciation for the creative process. It’s a testament to the artist's ability to speak about their work, yes, but it’s also a testament to Rick’s ability to ask the right questions at the right time to generate an incredible conversation. This show deserves semi-undivided attention, making it one of my favorite airplane or walking companions. It really is the gift that keeps on giving to hear some of your favorite artists talk about their process and how they got to where they are now. If you need a new pod to inspire, look no further.
TW: Earnestness
School Crushes
Obviously the month of February has all of us in a tizzy with everyone’s favorite equally platonic and romantic holiday, Valentine’s Day. This year I’m unfortunately in a place of forgetting what it feels like to have a deep, deep crush on someone. When thinking about this portion of the newsletter, because I’m simply always thinking of you, dear reading, it spurred me to realize I genuinely miss that feeling. At first I thought I could just glaze over the feeling and get over it, but, turns out, I simply cannot! Having a crush on someone is one of the deep, fun, almost child-like joys we can experience as adults and I’m doing whatever internal (and external) work I can to try and capture this feeling again. When I say external, I mean going out with the hope there is at least someone cute enough at the bar/club to create a fleeting, one-night-only narrative around. In my semi-successful adventures so far, and the impending doom of V-Day, I’ve become nostalgic for the days of high school/college when the field was ripe with potential crushes. There wasn’t this need to go out to the field, you literally couldn’t help but be in the field at all times (even if sometimes it was due to legal obligation). Remember having such a crush so intense that you memorized which passing period you were going to see them? Or the surprise on the first day of a semester of having a class with one of your crushes? The potential for seeing them on the weekend at whatever party or kick back was being thrown? Like come on. Maybe I’m nostalgic for a version of myself who allowed myself to yearn and crush in such a way. But also, I know me, and I know I’m still capable god damn it. I’m finding myself in social situations where the potential for a crush is high, and the results have been so poor I’m reciting the lucky girl syndrome mantra until someone appears. I just miss the school days where it was easy to have crushes left and right. Where we were surrounded by people our age and we couldn’t help but have a thing for someone, no matter how big or small. Where hormones literally raged and likely aided and abetted these feelings, but still made them feel nonetheless valid. Now I have to fabricate some narrative out of thin air that, yes, has similar origins of the crushes mentioned above, but just doesn't hit the same? School kinda sucked and, high school specifically, had kinda weird similarities to prison, but at least we had each other to constantly crush on, right?