Issue 2
In this issue of HoW, we're pleased to feature an interview with Alex Shakar, author of The Savage Girl. Set amongst a group of professional trendspotters, Shakar portrays a world where the idea of marketing "diet water" is a real possibility. That's right, a world much like our own. Shakar's novel reminds us of Billy Bragg's perceptive reply to Edwin Starr's question "War [in this case the Cold War], what is it good for?": says Bragg, "it's good for business." The Savage Girl also lets you in on the secret of what it might be like to become a "drain magnet in the glamour continuum." Dave Zauhar asks probing questions, in the way that only he can.
Of course, we like to think of ourselves as a kind of drain magnet in the pop culture continuum, and a scattered one it is. Thus, elsewhere in this issue, you'll find us attracted to a wide range of topics. Kiki Gilderhus notes the number of "murdered lover" songs in country and rock music, which leads her to the real-life (and appalling) story of bandleader Spade Cooley, the one-time "King of Western Swing." Turns out gangsta rappers got nothing on this guy. Then, with movies these days delving deeply into computer graphics and animation, Jim Kirchner wondered what would happen if he transported some figures from the past--say Jean Renoir and the Beatles--and dropped them somewhere in the vicinity of The Matrix. Next, the inimitable Dr. Julius Wankler reviews a book that tries to explain why "soccer" (football everywhere else) meets such resistance amongst sports fans in the U.S.--and surprisingly reveals that hasn't always been the case. Finally, Jeff Purdue recently fell under the spell of the late singer Nico, and he offers an in-depth look at her career and why it hasn't received more attention. It'll leave you wanting more--which is a good thing, as part 2 will be published in our next issue.
Perhaps HoW may be forgiven for wanting to find some thread that connects all of these articles; they all appear in the same issue, after all. And so, as HoW so often does, we turn to Walter Benjamin for help:
This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
We're no angels, we might add, but the sense that one is watching a train wreck is sometimes inescapable. (And yes, we realize that might not really be a connecting thread, but it's all we got.)
