Da Capo 2005 book out?

This is one of those books that always seems to leak out into stores over a period of weeks/months. I haven't seen it in Austin at all and I was in a couple places yeserday that I thought would've been carrying it.

Bought my copy in a store. Much thinner than the last few years, like half the size. Same price though. Only read a few pieces. Xgau's Believer essay on minstrels is in it, which I thought was great. Also a SFJ piece on London Calling that I'd missed. Not crazy about J. Hopper's piece on the Vans Warp tour but it would be hard to make that subject interesting.

Is that the Warped Tour story where she talks about fucking her white rapper boyfriend? Oh wait, that was in her white rapper boyfriend's Warped Tour diary in Spin where he talks about fucking her. Her story went on about how she cried for joy while wathcing Juliette Lewis and the Licks play. Sure glad they included that in the Dacapo book. Should be a teriffic read.

Yeah that's the one. The boyfriend is mentioned but I don't know who he is.

someone hurry up and tally the genders and races of the contributors so we can have a classic ILM discussion.

bf is Slug from atmosphere innit?

yep.

I glanced at this while at Borders last night: it really is quite thin. And one of the selections is from The Onion. I guess I thought that was cool a couple years ago when they sneaked the Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster piece in there, but now it's just like, yeah, we get it, the Onion is funny, the writing is smart, etc. -- but we only get like a dozen examples of quality music journalism along with it? And one of them's Hopper's Warped diary?

They should have left out the Onion after the "God gives a shoutout" piece.

Why is it short? Is paper getting expensive? They always run a list of a few dozen alternate selections in the back, so you'd think they would have enough pieces to choose from.

Slug's not white, he's biracial.

Does this somehow change the argument?

Whiney beat me to it.

Yeah, change all mentions of white to lousy.

Anybody got Table of Contents?

I was just out looking for this and couldn't see it anywhere.

Best Music Writing 2005 ($15.95), guest edited this time by writer JT LeRoy, contains articles by veterans (Greil Marcus on Buddy Holly; Luc Sante on Buddy Bolden; David Ritz on the last days of Ray Charles), and by the new generation (Dave Eggers on Big Country; Tom Roche on the BBC’s John Peele). Plus, there are always the one-of-a-kind articles (Ingrid Sischy and Camille Paglia talk about rock and style; the Washington Post’s David Segal on an obsessive recorder of short-wave “numbers stations”; and a priceless Onion article headlined, “Heartbreaking Country Ballad Paralyzes Trucking Industry”)

That doesn't bode too well.

looks good to me, except for Paglia, but even there, it's her and somebody else, providing maybe balance or variety or something.

Dave Eggars?

Camille Paglia?

John Peele?

from Gawker

JT LeRoy: Figment of Gus Van Sant’s Imagination?

READ MORE: JT LeRoy, New York Magazine, books, frauds, hoaxes

leroy.jpgNext week’s New York features a shocking expose of reclusive author JT LeRoy (NB: Like Michael Jackson and “king of pop,” journalists are contractually obligated to preface mention of JT LeRoy with the phrase “reclusive author”): he might be a fraud:

Literary darling JT LeRoy - enigmatic, troubled, sexually ambiguous - is said to be haunted into reclusiveness by his dark past. But a mounting body of evidence raises the possibility that the real reason he’s so reclusive is he doesn’t exist.

Well, “JT LeRoy” has, despite reclusivity, made the occasional public appearance, so we’re guessing they don’t mean the David Manning kind of non-existence, but the Meet John Doe type. Still — LeRoy’s utter fakeness has come up before:

Sarah, J.T. in tow, would perform Lynn songs at Nashville open-mike nights, her face daubed in charcoal to simulate coal dust. …Later, she fashioned a Coal Miner’s Daughter outfit from materials purloined from the Salvation Army, and she and LeRoy would shoplift food and liquor from Publix stores…

Wait a minute, I suddenly thought. What the hell is a Publix store? Like I said, I lived in Nashville before, during and after that period, and I had never heard of such an animal. I guessed that it was a supermarket, and I knew that to this day, liquor was unobtainable at Tennessee grocery stores[…]LeRoy did manage to screw up one of the only specific places he mentioned.

If New York does prove a level of fakeness beyond lack of knowledge of one’s own autobiographical geography, we won’t be too shocked (we’re so jaded). But while LeRoy may be a fraud, it’s unfortunately too late for his Flannery O’Connor-as-gay hustler writing not to exist either.