Thurston Moore “Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture”
Originally published in the Portland Mercury, June 2005
Thurston Moore’s collaborative zine-like book Mix Tape is like a mix tape of mix tapes: John Zorn, DJ Spooky, Christian Marclay, Mike Watt, Dodie Bellamy, Mac McCaughan, and dozens more writers, graphic designers, artists, and other people in the entertainment industry share stories of favorite mix tapes from and for friends, lovers, and parents.
The book is primarily a record of the mix tape as a method of emotional communication. Sensitive menfolk who can’t verbalize their love can give a mix tape on which rock stars express their undying emotions. As Moore puts it, “The toughest cowpoke can express his gooey love vibe without losing an iota of man stench.” He tells of bringing a box of mix tapes to wife and Sonic Youth bandmate Kim at the hospital when she was going into labor. Filmmaker Allison Anders recalls getting busted giving the same mix tape to multiple boys.
Read the complete article at The Portland Mercury.
Dennis Cooper Interview: Fourteen Hills
Originally published in Fourteen Hills, Summer 2005
Filled with bored kids, heavy metal, violence as communication and brutal sex, Dennis Cooper’s books read like a bloody head-on collision between Georges Bataille and Christopher Pike on the only strip of highway in a vast arid teenage wasteland. There are no survivors in the mangled vehicles, but the car’s tape decks are still blaring raunchy guitars.
The George Miles cycle, Cooper’s five-book magnum opus (Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, Period) aren’t sequels to each other but instead are linked more by obsession than plot line. Each book in the cycle is a complete stylistic makeover from the others, fluxing from sensual to cartoonish. A touring rock band that murders their dimwitted fans; a young zine writer sexually abused by both his gay adoptive fathers; a narrator, disturbingly also named Dennis, who dismembers beautiful young men who resemble an old love he can’t shake. Awful things happen in Cooper’s books, but they are also oddly revelatory and imbued with a strange kind of tenderness and compassion.
A longtime resident of Los Angeles, fame is as much a part of the air he breathes as the carbon monoxide particulates. As a journalist, Cooper has interviewed Keanu Reeves, Leonardo DiCaprio, Courtney Love and John Waters. His most recent novel, My Loose Thread, began as a non-fiction examination of high school shootings before taking on a life of its own.
