Today at Flavorpill, we celebrated some of our favorite library scenes from film and TV. We were excited to hear that Wikipedia will be joining the anti-SOPA blackout that’s currently planned for this Wednesday. We wondered what Coach Taylor would have made of Craig Finn’s solo debut, Clear Heart Full Eyes, which is currently streaming in full over at NPR. We tried to imagine who would want to take an Alaskan cruise with Kenny G. We asked ourselves if the latest poster for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is for real or some kind of inside joke. We lusted after this incredibly colorful typewriter. We found this manuscript version of Great Expectations almost impossible to make out thanks to Dickens’ unwieldy scrawl. We geeked out over this video showing how Google Image Search reacts when you begin your search with a transparent image. And finally, we were amused by these really old photos of very serious children posing with toys. What do you think it would have taken to get them to crack a smile? An iphone?
Last week, we read about Alina Simone, who published her first book, a collection of essays, this past year. However, what’s fascinating about her story is that her editor (at big-name publishing house FSG, no less) didn’t discover her in a small literary journal, in a magazine article, or pluck her from an MFA program, but instead found her music on internet radio service Pandora and approached her to suggest that she write a book.
“It seemed like he already viewed music and literature as part of one continuum,” Simone has explained. “Certainly, the best songs out there read like the best poems or short stories.” Though we think there’s some room for argument on that point, we can definitely think of quite a few lyricists who we really wish would write novels — whether we think they’ve got the life experience or imagination to write a fascinating story or just enough chops slapping words together that we want to roll around in ever sentence they assemble. Click through to check out which musicians we think should write novels — and our first imaginings of what those novels would be like — and let us know who you’d like to see transition into fiction in the comments.
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A few days ago, we posted our selection of the albums we’re most looking forward to in 2012. As it happens, most of these are due for release a little later in the year — but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s nothing worth hearing due out in January. We’ve pored over the release schedules for our regular monthly round-up of the 10 records that we we reckon everyone needs to hear over the next month, and the results await you after the jump — including a couple that we missed last week, and would definitely have included in our most anticipated records of 2012 if we’d know about them. (Note: this does not include She Who Shall Not Be Named, so don’t ask.)
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In case you were wondering why fans of both The Hold Steady and Friday Night Lights have been losing their shit all week, here’s what happened: the band’s frontman has announced plans to release a solo album called Clear Heart Full Eyes, an homage to the show that was recorded in Texas and whose title is a play on FNL‘s most memorable catchphrase (“Clear eyes, full hearts can’t lose”). The news got us thinking about how wonderful it would be if our favorite programs were scored by bands we love, which led us to compile the following wish list of TV shows and the musicians who were born to soundtrack them. Add your pairings in the comments. Read More »
It’s not enough to just be awesome at one thing anymore. More and more artists are multitasking, and we’re seeing a particular amount of crossover between the somewhat unlikely genres of music and literature. But wait — aren’t musicians supposed to be outgoing egomaniacs and aren’t writers supposed to be tweedy shut-ins? Well, the writer/musician isn’t exactly a new trend — remember Tarantula, Dylan’s stream-of-consciousness book of prose-poetry? And don’t forget that Leonard Cohen was actually a writer first. So maybe there’s something to this whole writer turned rock star thing. Here are some multitaskers who make us feel bad about ourselves when we lie around the house all Sunday.
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They may not look it, but few know rock and roll like Chuck Klosterman and Craig Finn. This in mind, we are reassured to know that the pair, along with Tom Ruprecht, a long time Letterman writer, will be joining task to produce the coming-of-age with rock-and-roll film Fargo Rock City. The movie will find inspiration in Klosterman’s 2001 memoir of the same title, which explores Klosterman’s experience growing up as a heavy metal fan in a North Dakota, and how music helped him to transcend. Or as the subtitle reads, his “Heavy Metal Odyssey in North Dakota.”
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