Return of the Hood

We tend to think of our common, American past, as a series of moments of shared quaintness — pocked with unimaginable lightning strikes of violence that we’d rather soon forget — and so we have.

Where once we cringed at the white robe, and the Hitler salutes of those Anti-Americans who were landed, and living among us, we now have them — fresh faced, cauterized, and smelling of Pine-Sol and Mothballs — all around us, Heiling Hitler, but not the rest of us; seeking a clawback return to a time they never knew, and a place they never dwelled, and yet, they seek validation, and exclusive membership, in a grog of hate that bears the sealing wax impression, and the tacit approval, of our President of the United States of America.

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Celebrating the Sheffield Sound

The other day I watched an incredible documentary, Made in Sheffield, that brought back many of the musical memes and memories of my reckoning youth. What I call “The Sheffield Sound” was a movement in the UK in the ’70’s and ’80’s that changed the music world with the introduction of “synthetic sounds.”

Synthesizers were given priority over the standard musical drive of a lead guitar. David Bowie said the music coming out of Sheffield was “the future of music.” Was David Bowie right? Or did the Sheffield Sound implode in vanished wishes and bitter competition? “The Human League” was the lead “sound” coming out of Sheffield, and of the two versions of the band, one didn’t make any money:

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