GUEST EDITOR

As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

This week, singer/songwriter Richard Buckner releases Our Blood (Merge), his first new music since 2006’s Meadow. The nine-track LP was recorded by Buckner at his upstate New York home studio with pedal-steel guitarist Buddy Cage (New Riders Of The Purple Sage) and drummer Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth). Buckner kicks off a co-headlining tour with labelmate David Kilgour (the Clean) on August 16 in Los Angeles. In the meantime, Buckner will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Buckner: My truck turned over 566,000 miles this month. I got it as a lease, new, in 1996. When the time came turn it in a few years later, I was so much over on the allotted mileage that it made more sense for me to just buy it. It has worked out well: It still has the original engine and transmission, and I’ve only had to make a few other expected repairs besides a couple of batteries and about six windshields. The only modifications I’ve made are the salt, pepper and hot-sauce tour-food cure-alls that I travel with and trading in the cassette player for something I can plug my iPod into. I take it to my local dealership to get the scheduled maintenance checks, and my truck is like a celebrity or an anomaly. Over the years, the driver’s seat seems to have taken the worst of the wear, but last time I was there, the mechanic who usually works on it yanked out a seat from a junker that they were about to crush and put it in without me even asking, free of charge. Not new, but springier, a little younger, less stained from spilled coffee and such. I sit a little higher now, proud, amazed that both of us are still running.

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If By Yes is the latest project from the multi-talented Petra Haden. The band’s debut, Salt On Sea Glass (Chimera), took almost a decade to make and features Haden collaborating with Yuka Honda (Cibo Matto) and Hirotaka “Shimmy” Shimizu and Yuko Araki (Cornelius), as well as guests such as David Byrne and Nels Cline (Wilco). Haden is the daughter of jazz legend Charlie Haden and the sibling of musicians Rachel, Tanya (the sisters are triplets) and Josh Haden. Though she has played with a who’s-who of alt-rock and jazz artists over the past 20 years, Haden is perhaps best known for her fantastic 2005 a cappella interpretation of The Who Sell Out. Haden will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Check out the mix tape she made us in 2008, and read our brand new Q&A with her.

Haden: Superman is my all-time favorite movie. Christopher Reeve and the music are the reasons I love this movie. I had Superman posters up on my wall in high school and two vinyl records of the soundtrack. One given to me by my dad and the other from a high-school friend. I was all about Superman. I would listen to the soundtrack on my Walkman on the way to school riding the bus, over and over again. I used to dream about playing the music to Superman in an orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl. Gene Hackman is also outstanding in this movie. I love the subtle humor that goes on, too.

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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

Heavy Years: 2000-2010 (Ernest Jenning) is the latest release from Brooklyn-by-way-of-Chicago singer/songwriter Chris Mills. The 14-track retrospective compiles songs from his last four albums, along with two new tracks recorded with DJ Oktopus (Dalek). Mills is currently on the road supporting Heavy Years, and he will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Mills: Drew Glackin was a dear friend and a great bass player before his untimely passing in 2008. He was also a true road warrior who logged thousands of miles and hours of studio time with bands including the Silos, the Hold Steady, the Crash Test Dummies, yours truly and a million others. Often when I think of Drew, I think of traveling. Not because we went on the road together that often, but because together or apart we always ended up going to the same places and running into the same people. And I’m talking about people, places and restaurants thousands of miles away and many years apart.

A typical conversation would run:
“Do you know so and so in Amsterdam?”
“Sure we hang out at the Mello Mello every time I’m there.”
“Man, I love that place. I slept under the bar there one night because I couldn’t find my way home.”

I bring this up because one of the first memories I have of Drew after I moved to New York was bonding over a little restaurant in Osseo, Wisc., called Norske Nook. If you are in a band that’s traveled the road between Minneapolis and Madison, there is a good chance you’ve stopped here. And if you haven’t, you should.

If you are lonely because you’ve been living in a van for three weeks, and you’re tired and head-achey because of shenanigans from the night before and you’re pissed because no one bought any merch, the soundman was a jerk or your bass player finished the crossword puzzle in the paper you bought, this place will make everything better. What’s so great about the Norske Nook? The pie! The pie in this place goes on for miles, and it’s all delicious. I like the strawberry rhubarb. I don’t remember what Drew liked, probably the banana cream. But it doesn’t matter. It’s all fresh, it’s all home made, and it’s totally worth being a half hour late to sound check.

I haven’t been back there in a long time, but next time I go I’m getting two pieces. One for me and one for Drew.

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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

Marcellus Hall first made a name for himself as the frontman of Railroad Jerk, which released four albums on Matador between 1990 and 1996 before breaking up. Hall and RJ drummer Dave Varenka went on to form White Hassle the next year, issuing a handful of records until disbanding in 2005. These days, Hall is pursuing a solo career, and he just released his debut album, The First Line, on Isaac Brock’s Glacial Pace label. Aside from the music, the 13-track LP also shows off Hall’s other big talent: illustration. Since moving to New York City in the late ’80s, Hall has seen his artwork appear in the likes of The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and The First Line features a 44-page book showcasing his art. Not only is Hall guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week, he’s also drawing illustrations to accompany everything he writes about. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Hall: The beat pulsed, and the bass throbbed. In the neighborhood bar, near Strauss Square where the old Loews Canal Street theater still stands, you sat undisturbed whilst a hailstorm raged outside. Golf-ball-sized golf balls sailed netward at Chelsea Piers, and you peered through the bar window and thought about “the one who got away.” A woman crouching near a municipal garden across the street looked both ways. When the coast was clear, she uprooted a plant and carried it to her apartment.

Video after the jump.

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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

Kristian Hoffman and Lance Loud met in high school back in the early ’70s in Santa Barbara, Calif. After starring in PBS cinéma-vérité documentary An American Family, they formed the Mumps, moved to New York and shared Max’s and CBGB stages with all the legends of the punk/new-wave explosion of 1976: Television, the Ramones, Talking Heads and Blondie. Hoffman and Loud also had front-row seats for the Mercer Arts Center incubation of the New York Dolls, before that. In our book, that grants you unlimited license to open the floodgates. Fop (Kayo), Hoffman’s latest solo album, is an ornate masterpiece of baroque pop, well worth your attention. Hoffman will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Q&A with him.

Hoffman: When Ann Magnuson and I were re-booting the Jobriath medley we first performed in 1996 for her recent Bowie Birthday Tribute, I put a question out on Facebook asking for other Bowie wannabes that perhaps deserved a moment in our Glamtastic show. Roderick “Mott Redux” Falconer was immediately suggested, along with the rather more Roxy glam posturings of New Zealand’s Space Waltz (“Beautiful Boy” is indeed a seminal glam track, and I used the word “seminal” advisedly), but the most earnest protestations were for the inclusion of one Brett Smiley, about whose canon, even though I happened to be a Facebook friend of his(!), I was criminally underinformed.

I was deluged with mp3s and YouTube links and was an immediate convert. I couldn’t believe my luck when an original copy of his sole 45 was available for a nominal fee on eBay (with the picture sleeve, complete with spell-challenged lyrics), as was his out-of-print 2003 CD compilation Breathlessy Brett and the 2005 Brett-sploitation bio The Prettiest Star: Whatever Happened To Brett Smiley?. It was a Brett bonanza!

I have been a student of all things Bowie ever since I got an original DJ copy of Bowie’s Deram album for 10 cents (!) in a cardboard box at the front of my local Santa Barbara record store circa 1970. There were about 100 of them; how I wish I’d bought them all! You can hear my slavish attempts at Bowie-tinged glam-deur in the chorus of “Imaginary Friend” from my new CD Fop, which shows off my guitar player Dave Bongiovanni riffing at his most deliciously Ronson-esque. Also, my duet with Prince Poppycock, “Soothe Me,” is a naked attempt to manifest the disco glam flavor of La Bowie’s “1984.”

Since Bowie’s credibility was one of the few that eked through the anti-stadium hate-fest that was so joyfully “punk” in my youth (at least until “Let’s Dance”), my Bowie throughline has been uninterrupted since high school, as has been my adoration for Jobriath. I heard snatches of Bowie-inspired glory in Lewis Furey’s “My Poetic Young Man” and especially the magnificent “Clarabelle’s Lament” and had studiously tried to navigate the vagaries of Steve Harley’s relatively dour Cockney Rebel, bought into Deaf School’s Roxy/Bonzo hybrid and, of course, slavered over Sparks’ every contemporaneous release. But how is it that I missed Brett’s special musical gift to this genre?

His album is the perfect amalgam of Bowie’s most unapologetically lispy space-y moment and trappings of the bubble-glam of the Sweet, presaging the breathless schoolboy vocals of Milk ‘N’ Cookies’ Justin Strauss (a.k.a. Justin Tyme) by a good two or three years, with the barely post-pubescent gender-indeterminate lasciviousness of Sable Starr-era Star magazine. It was if Rodney Bingenheimer had prayed at the altar of David Bowie’s infamous “dress” cover, which Rodney had ostentatiously framed on the wall of his famous nightclub Rodney’s English Discotheque, and Brett leapt forth, fully formed, to freeze the moment of Bowie at his most femme and most rocking in uniquely American form.

Brett’s story is by now fairly well-known (except to me!), but a quick recap finds him in a similar cultural quagmire as Jobriath in regards to his contemporary reception. Andrew Loog Oldham, probably feeling the pinch as his loopy ’60s credentials gave way to a rather less forgiving ’70s, seemed a tad desperate to find his own “Bowie” and thus wheedle his way back into the fickle embrace of hipsterdom. Brett was his tip for the top, and with fanfare equally as lavish as the hype that destroyed Jobriath, plus an immense budget that apparently was given more attention and scrutiny than Brett’s obviously transcendent gifts, the machine was set forth to secure Brett’s position as the “unisexual” (a term that is oddly still seen on hair salons in the most Latin of barrios all over Los Angeles) Most Beautiful Boy In The World.

The almost-perfect 45 of “Va Va Va Va Voom” (featuring longtime fave Steve Marriot on guitar! “Hey you with your red boots on/You’re mad/I assume!”) b/w “Space Boy” (an angelically twee anthem with soaring strings and these more-Bowie-than-thou-lines: “I’m holding on to your ionized trails/My zenith is thrusting at your Azimov tales”—now that’s a space orgy!) was released to minor radio play and quick obscurity. Yet a fabulously decadent, lavishly produced and luxuriously eccentric LP was already finished and ready to be released. With amazing lyrics like these from the gorgeously orchestrated “Queen Of Hearts”: “Celebrated, penny weighted, really vain/Sophisticated, elevate, a different plane/Extravagated, fabricate, I’ll entertain/I’m just the Queen of Hearts/I’ll leap off Sunset Towers/What a way to go/I can’t say yes/But I don’t want to say no.” Brett almost out-Bowies Bowie’s “twisted name on Garbo’s brow” and adds Philip Marlowe Los Angeles specificity to the gender-defying lament about cultural alienation.

Cue: Russell Harty, a popular English talk show host who brazenly brown-nosed any passing talent-challenged pretender (David Essex, anyone?) who’d been bought into the top 50, chose this moment to demarcate the line between himself as self-appointed “cultural” arbiter and this fresh young voice and tried to verbally assassinate Brett on the first question after a stellar performance of the glorious “Space Ace”: “Are you glad that’s over?” Russell’s career would live on to feed unthreatening pabulum to blue-haired, bridge-club attendees for years and to droolingly, sycophantically suck up to the very similar but more chart-friendly likes of Bowie. But even though Brett defended himself and deflected Russell’s clueless barbs with quick wit, deft ripostes and immense charm that so reminded me of my friend and raconteur non pareil Lance Loud, and by all accounts Brett won the battle, but he sadly lost the war. The mighty had spoken, and his album was never released. The great “T.V. Eye” had blinked and turned askance, and Brett was officially “over.”

With Jobriath, despite the unearned calumny and marginalization his very real accomplishments had been received with, at least we had the music; the original LPs were not hard to find, and Morrissey famously championed a Jobriath compilation on his private imprint. With Brett, the voice was silenced. The music was stolen from him and from us. It’s just a wonder that this glamsterwork has been restored to us, and even if the CD is currently out of print, you can still get the album on iTunes or check eBay or Gemm for your very own copy!

Video after the jump.
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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

Gary Louris and Mark Olson left Jayhawks fans in a lurch when they parted ways rather abruptly in 1995. Turns out Olson had tired of all the obligations and trappings that came with the Minneapolis-spawned group’s hard-won success. So he escaped to the Mojave Desert to ply a rootsier, salt-of-the-earth trade with the help of wife Victoria Williams. Ah, but time—and perhaps a little fiscal motivation—has a way of smoothing over the rough patches in many productive creative partnerships. (Unless you’re Bob Mould and Grant Hart.) And 15 years later, the Jayhawks have returned to us more-or-less fully intact. For how long, no one really knows, but they just did a string of shows to back the enhanced reissues of 1992’s Hollywood Town Hall and 1995’s Tomorrow The Green Grass (American/Legacy). With their sugary (if unrefined) harmonies, rugged intelligence and casual accessibility, the albums are to the alt-country movement what One Of These Nights and Hotel California were to ’70s SoCal country rock—even if the comparably modest sales figures may not indicate as much. Louris and Olson will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with Louris.

Louris: Yes, Minnesota, at times, has been called Loserville U.S.A., and maybe the Twins are still living in a grace period from the ’87 and ’91 World Series victories, but they seem to be the only home team to have one the big one. And with the new stadium and the way the organization works, they are truly the little engine that could. They could, that is, if they could only get past the big, bad Yankees in the first round of the playoffs. Let’s face it. I am a sports junkie. Olson is a news junkie, I am a sports junkie. I guess he lives in the real world and I want to escape. Because although all pro sports are really a business nowadays, they are still an escape for the fan. Maybe that is why people who listen to sports radio get upset when their broadcasters get bored (understandably) and branch off into world politics. Who wants to hear another athlete being interviewed, talking about someone “stepping up” or the ususal cliches? Almost as boring as listening to or reading an interview from a whining, self-centered musician like me? But I still love my Vikings even if they let us down every year. Yes, sports might not impress the reader, but I must be honest: I love them. Maybe that is because there is a clear winner and loser, unlike the arts, particularly music.

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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

The 25-year career of singer/songwriter John Wesley Harding has skyrocketed of late with the publication of no fewer than three critically acclaimed novels under his birth name, Wesley Stace. Equally amazing, the artist named for Bob Dylan’s misspelling of Texas gunfighter John Wesley Harden has just released the finest album of a career that’s seen him record at least 18 longplayers for labels ranging from high-profile majors to imprints so small the back catalog was stored in somebody’s garage between the cat box and the washing machine. Produced by old pal Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows) and fleshed out by no less than R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and the Decemberists, The Sound Of His Own Voice (Yep Roc) is a full-bore stunner with Wes (nobody calls him John) weaving his usual lyrical magic through knockout arrangements of extraordinary songs that revive the ghosts of the Kinks, David Lynch soundtrack guru Angelo Badalamenti and wall-of-sound maestro Phil Spector. For yet another career-topping milestone (gasp), JWH will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week for (yes it’s true) the second time. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Harding: I was so happy to find this memory the other day. Joey Ramone and I were on a show together at the Bottom Line in NYC in 1990, hosted by Vin Scelsa (one of the great DJs, as I’m sure you know), and he and I ended up hanging out most, if not all, of the night, with his lovely friend Robin, and he played me his new song “Cabbies On Crack.” He showed me how to spin the Astor Place Cube and told me what to order at Gem Spa! It was kind of a dream come true. He also loved ABBA, and we talked about them a lot.

The inside of the card reads … Actually, I was going to transcribe it, but I think I’ll just scan it, because it’s not only what he says, but the entire presentation that makes this a treasured possession I thought long, long lost. Long live Joey Ramone.

“Kill in ’92″!

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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

For post-punk scholars, Tommy Stinson will be forever fused to his infamous 12-year stint with Minneapolis garage-rock overachievers the Replacements. These days, the 45-year-old journeyman and doting dad is playing bass for Guns N’ Roses and Soul Asylum and has released his second solo album (and first in seven years), the well-crafted, bluesy and robust One Man Mutiny (Done To Death Music). Stinson will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.

Stinson: I remember back in the late 1900s when commercial airlines used to clean the toilets between flights and give coach class customers crappy little sandwiches or even breakfast during most flights. Back in the days when our crew would sit in the back of the plane chain-smoking and getting hammered even on the short flights to Chicago. Ahh, those were the good old days for sure!

You used to be able to get to the airport in Minneapolis a half hour before your flight was due to leave, rush through security with just minutes to spare, and they would hold the plane for you. That was customer service!

When I was a kid it used to be such a thrill to fly that I would pack my suitcase the night before. I’d wake up in the morning, shower and put myself together like it was showtime. It felt pretty decadent actually. Well, at least to my young bumpkin ass. It also seemed like there was a whole lot more leg room back then. I don’t think I’ve grown much since I was about 17, and I swear to you my knees didn’t used to hit the back of the seat in front of me as they do now.

Traveling with guitars and assorted band stuff was also easier to get through. You could just pay the curbside porter a couple bucks to take your gear right through the baggage area without paying extra per piece or weight charges. It seemed pretty cool back then. And for the record, it was going to crap even before 9/11 as far as I’m concerned. I can forgive all the security shit that may or may not be effective these days—I get it. At least you know what to expect and how to prepare. However, it makes me re-think the whole getting-a-fuckin’-driver’s-license issue, which I have never had. But I would rather travel by a Ford Econoline 15-passenger van almost anywhere in the world than fly on another commercial airline. Screw on some pontoons and a life raft or two and I’ll drive through an ocean, a river, a creek, whatever. Flying on an airplane after all these years sucks.

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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

For post-punk scholars, Tommy Stinson will be forever fused to his infamous 12-year stint with Minneapolis garage-rock overachievers the Replacements. These days, the 45-year-old journeyman and doting dad is playing bass for Guns N’ Roses and Soul Asylum and has released his second solo album (and first in seven years), the well-crafted, bluesy and robust One Man Mutiny (Done To Death Music). Stinson will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with him.

Stinson: It started off as the most punk-rock idea I’d heard in years: Axl owned the name Guns N’ Roses and was determined to continue on with all of us other dudes and weather the storm. I thought it was a good idea then, and I still think it is, in that he’s proven that he’s unflappable. What he decides to do, he’s going to do, no matter what.

One of the highlights of the whole experience is having written songs with a bunch of other guys I’d never worked with before to make Chinese Democracy. In the process, I realized two things. One is that Axl is fair to a fault when it comes to writing music. He wants everybody to have a part in every song, so everybody has a vested interest and every song will be the best it’s gonna be. And two, I learned how to write with other people and keep my ego out of the room. When you’re working with eight other people, that’s a necessity.

The touring aspect of it all is a whole other beast. Despite what anyone might think, it’s actually quite a bit of work putting on that large of a show. The travel is grueling and I miss my family. But at the end of the day, it’s a lot of fun to see all of the people out there go nuts for “Welcome To The Jungle.”

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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

Andy Shernoff was always the main creative force behind one of New York’s best bands ever, the Dictators. He wrote the material and sang the leads. In the royal line of succession for NYC bands in the ’70s, they came along right after the birth of the New York Dolls. Every bit as raw, noisy and in-your-face as the Dolls, there was one thing the Dictators didn’t share with David Johansen and Co.: their sense of fashion. Rather than climb on the glam bandwagon, the Dictators dressed in leather jackets, jeans and T-shirts and paved the way for the punk revolution of 1977. Shernoff is doing the solo thing these days, with a new single called “Are You Ready To Rapture?” He’ll also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Shernoff: I like iconoclastic bad-asses in any field. Pharyngula is a confrontational blog run by biology professor PZ Meyers who doesn’t mince words when it comes to superstition, religion, evolution deniers and climate-change skeptics. He confronts them and demolishes their lies and delusions with the fury of an ultimate fighter and the precision of a brain surgeon. Though he is widely popular in the science blogosphere, his articulate defense of reality deserves an even wider audience. Science is the new rock ‘n’ roll.

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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

Anyone have any idea how long Southern Culture On The Skids has been around? Would you believe since 1983? Time flies. (Clever response: You cannot, they’re too erratic.) The current lineup of SCOTS features Rick Miller (the one constant since its inception) on guitar and vocals, bassist Mary Huff and drummer Dave Hartman. If you haven’t heard what they sound like, an educated guess that included Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Cramps, Tav Falco’s Panther Burns and Man Or Astro-Man? might be pretty close to the bone. The trio’s most recent album, Zombiefied (Kudzu), came out just in time for graves to open so the dead can have one last stagger around the countryside. Miller will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Miller: The Brainiac is my favorite Mexican horror movie. Surreal weirdness. A passing comet unleashes a 300-year-old curse. The curse came from the Baron Vitelius of Astara as he was burned at the stake for lots of nasty behavior. He reaps his vengeance on Mexico as The Brainiac. The monster has a huge head and looks like a cross between the wolf man and Rasputin the mad monk. He has a long forked tongue that he uses to suck the brains out of call girls and socialites!

Video after the jump.

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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

Anyone have any idea how long Southern Culture On The Skids has been around? Would you believe since 1983? Time flies. (Clever response: You cannot, they’re too erratic.) The current lineup of SCOTS features Rick Miller (the one constant since its inception) on guitar and vocals, bassist Mary Huff and drummer Dave Hartman. If you haven’t heard what they sound like, an educated guess that included Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Cramps, Tav Falco’s Panther Burns and Man Or Astro-Man? might be pretty close to the bone. The trio’s most recent album, Zombiefied (Kudzu), came out just in time for graves to open so the dead can have one last stagger around the countryside. Miller will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Miller: Invisible Invaders is a great ’50s sci-fi movie about invisible aliens who come to earth to use the dead to kill the living. Their plan is to inhabit dead bodies and use them to destroy the human race unless we give up our nuclear weapons. The aliens’ base just happens to be located on the moon! These really slow-moving zombies look a lot like the ones used 10 years later in George Romeo’s Night Of The Living Dead. The alien/zombies are finally defeated with a noise gun. They hate noise—it stops ‘em dead. I could see a remake where the world is rescued by Slash with a Les Paul and a Marshall stack.

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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

Exactly 11 years ago, Miles Zuniga was jetting off to Amsterdam with his Austin-based alt-rock outfit Fastball to try to put some touring muscle behind its latest release, The Harsh Light Of Day. Expectations were high, given the surprising mainstream success of 1998′s All The Pain Money Can Buy, which the band milked for almost two years. Fast-forward to today, and Zuniga has humbler aspirations for his first solo effort, These Ghosts Have Bones (33 1/3), a wrenchingly personal, fitfully melodic ode to the breakup of his 10-year marriage. Though Fastball is still very much a working entity, Ghosts’ quirky centerpiece, “Marfa Moonlight,” would’ve undoubtedly been a much different animal with bandmates Tony Scalzo and Joey Shuffield involved. The same goes for the rest of this inward-looking song cycle. Zuniga will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Zuniga: I’m really not a T-shirt kind of guy. I like to wear shirts, ya know, with buttons and maybe a pocket. I don’t want your fucking logo all over my clothes. I just want a simple, tasteful design that I could run around town in. If I get a dinner invitation while I’m running around town, I want to be able to attend without going all the way back to my house to change. In short, I want something casual, but spiffy enough to go somewhere nice in. Oliver Spencer fits the bill. The main reason I like their shirts is they don’t fit you like a dress. So many dress shirts in America are made for the guy who played Norm in Cheers. Oliver Spencer shirts are fitted. You don’t have to tuck them in. You can just wear them.

“Nothing else will fit right/Or seem so directly applied/Than fitted shirt hung on me/Fitted shirt all right”.

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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

When singer/songwriter Rachael Yamagata was growing up, she went to all-girls school that she says warped her into the relationship-obsessed woman she’s become, at least in the lyrics of her songs. She began singing with a funk-crazed dance band called Bumpus while she was in college studying theater. While touring and recording with Bumpus, she was also writing confessional, deeply emotional songs that didn’t fit the band’s format. Happenstance, her first solo album, was a folk/pop charmer. Her tunes have appeared on The O.C., The L Word, Grey’s Anatomy and Alias, and Ray LaMontagne, Ryan Adams and Conor Oberst all expressed admiration for her vocal style. Having just issued Chesapeake (Frankenfish), Yamagata will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with her.

Yamagata: When I first started writing songs, it was all about the lyric for me. I just wanted to express myself in layers with some attempt at being poetic because it allowed me to hint at emotional complexities without having to break them down in some clinical way. Once I began playing in a band, it became about the onstage chemistry and feeding off of the crowd, the perfectly transitioned set list that could navigate the energy of the room and so forth. I lived on canned ravioli and pretzel bits that I bought from the gas station for years and was perfectly comfortable with waiting tables and rehearsing at odd hours of the night just to be able to put on a show. I was never poor, but I did pay many dues and still my unfailing desire was to get onstage and keep writing songs.

Patti Smith’s book of her journey through NYC life and her art—poetry, sketching, prose, installations, etc—not only reminded me of a true artist’s journey, but it literally kicked my ass. For me, it told an honest recount of friendship, love, passion for her work, courage to face mistakes, fear expressed on a platter, struggles and triumphs faced and in color. It kicked my ass because it reminded me in a master class way of the importance of the work and over the years it has been too easy for me to get lost in the details of business and survival. My trials have been next to nothing compared to hers, and yet she shouldered on for the sake of her work. She lives it in everything she does. Her writing is stunning, and the sentences are these individual treasures.

I am no book critic, nor Patti Smith obsessed fan, but I was incredibly moved by this book. The history of music weaved into the chapters, of course, are amazing and spoken in real time. I think I got six copies for last Christmas and only made the time to read it a few weeks ago. I’ve met her once and shared the stage with her twice now, and after reading this know that I blew that brief interaction. If I had had any idea of all she really stands for in life and art, I wouldn’t have dared even say hello, but rather admired from afar. That, or never let her out of my sight before she agreed to answer one billion questions.

Read it. That’s all I’ve got.

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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

When singer/songwriter Rachael Yamagata was growing up, she went to all-girls school that she says warped her into the relationship-obsessed woman she’s become, at least in the lyrics of her songs. She began singing with a funk-crazed dance band called Bumpus while she was in college studying theater. While touring and recording with Bumpus, she was also writing confessional, deeply emotional songs that didn’t fit the band’s format. Happenstance, her first solo album, was a folk/pop charmer. Her tunes have appeared on The O.C., The L Word, Grey’s Anatomy and Alias, and Ray LaMontagne, Ryan Adams and Conor Oberst all expressed admiration for her vocal style. Having just issued Chesapeake (Frankenfish), Yamagata will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with her.

Yamagata: Under The Tuscan Sun, The Notebook, Kill Bill, Charlie’s Angels, Castaway. These are movies that for some reason just do it for me in terms of inspiration when it comes to getting back on one’s feet. Mind you I attempt them after several rounds of The Way We Were to truly let all the tears of love lost flow, followed by repeated episodes of Sex In The City and Project Runway—the first to remind me how one can triumph through several breakups and still stay optimistic, the other to remind me that, gosh darnit, I can make something if I really put my mind to it.

But back to the movies. Under The Tuscan Sun lets you be the brokenhearted one in all of its tear-stained glory—permission to be a mess if you will. Of course, it would be nice to be as sexy as Diane Lane, but hey there are a few scenes where she’s a bit rumpled so one can almost relate on a human/non-goddess level. The story is the dream: off to Italy to heal and then the house and then the fixing up of said house and then the everything falls into place life/love story. I eat it up everytime. Maybe it’s because I just learned to use a drill and can picture fixing up a house in Italy, but on the whole the basic lessons are great: Work on your house and forget about everything else. The ladybugs will come, and they always do.

The Notebook: the most perfect movie to indulge in when you don’t want to stop believing that your perfect grand love is out there and will prevail. Romance. Romance. Romance. All the way with frosting on top. Ladies, tell me you can’t quote this movie. I dare you. “We fight—that’s what we do.” Anyway, watch that and keep hope alive.

Kill Bill. I know this is a slightly strange choice, but I’m gonna put it up with Charlie’s Angels (whichever one) because all remind about the kick-ass women taking the reigns and being empowered. The physical aspect of it goes into also take-some-martial-arts–and-get-fit territory because one cannot help but be inspired by the amazon beauty wearing a banana cat suit or the three ladies looking hot and retro and doing coordinated stunts to rescue and defeat. Everytime I watch either I want to go for a run or chop down trees and such.

And, finally, Castaway. I’m a sucker for a stranded-on-an-island movie and make the choice—give up or make do with what you’ve got and get you out of an isolated situation (a.k.a. off the damn island). Here’s a guy ruled by time and protocol who gets back to basics, finds spiritual comfort in a volleyball, reconciles the beauty of lost love as a gift because he is alive everyday and loses a ton of weight in the process. Ultimately, when I’m getting through or over something, I’m hoping for the same outcome. (Replace volleyball with cats.)

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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

John Doe, the guy who formed one half of X’s front line next to Exene Cervenka more than 30 years ago, is still on the scene, doing what he does best on his new solo album, Keeper (Yep Roc). With all four of its original members (Doe, Cervenka, guitarist Billy Zoom and drummer D.J. Bonebreak) on board, the best band to emerge from L.A.’s punk scene is slated to perform an impressive schedule of live shows this fall that includes a South American tour with Pearl Jam. Doe will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Doe: Another favorite topic is misused grammar, especially quotes. A sign spray-painted on a brick wall in Midtown Manhattan read: BEWARE OF “DOG.” Exactly what did you have to beware of? Is “DOG” code for something? Like “DOG” actually means BEAR, MOUNTAIN LION or BADASS SAMOAN RUGBY PLAYER. Another example of bad grammar is the hit song that has the line “What if God was one of us?” Wouldn’t the correct version be “What if God were one of us?” Sigh of resignation. Blues songs are generally exempt from this rule. And if it’s a great song, who cares?!

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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

Ben Lee had barely cracked the puberty code when he fronted renowned Aussie alt-rock combo Noise Addict, and as a well-weathered 16-year-old, he began his debut solo album, the mature yet still naive Grandpaw Would. Lee’s third album, Breathing Tornados, garnered best male artist and album of the year nominations in Australia. After 2002’s big-selling hey you. yes you., Lee started his own label and released the most upbeat album in his increasingly dark catalog, 2005’s Awake Is The New Sleep, requiring him to compose acceptance speeches for best male artist, best independent release and single of the year wins at home. Lee’s impressive string of successes continued with 2007’s Ripe, but the streak stopped with 2009’s The Rebirth Of Venus. The quasi-concept album of Lee’s ruminations on women was almost universally derided as half-baked philosophical twaddle set to a weirdly diverse pop soundtrack. Simultaneously, he was also examining the inherent power of dreams with Dr. Jan Lloyd, whose death last year inspired Lee to again brave the concept-album waters with Deeper Into Dream (Dangerbird), a loosely threaded set about the mind movies our brains script, direct and discard every single night. Lee will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Lee: There is something truly remarkable occurring in the Western world at the moment, and that is the increasingly widespread ceremonial use of ayahuasca, a medicinal psychotropic plant from peru. It is referred to reverentially by people that use it as “the medicine” and the experience of being under its influence as “doing the work.” It’s hard to describe, but it’s important to note that this is in no way a “party drug” and seems to have little chance of being taken in a recreational direction. I have experienced it several times, and each time, it was like every cell in my body and every fibre of my being was being examined and stretched and cleansed and taught. In the amazon it is sometimes referred to both as the “death vine” and “the grandmother,” as it takes you through a death and rebirth experience with a loving touch, pushing you to reach the potential of your being.

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As 2011 has come to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

Ben Lee had barely cracked the puberty code when he fronted renowned Aussie alt-rock combo Noise Addict, and as a well-weathered 16-year-old, he began his debut solo album, the mature yet still naive Grandpaw Would. Lee’s third album, Breathing Tornados, garnered best male artist and album of the year nominations in Australia. After 2002’s big-selling hey you. yes you., Lee started his own label and released the most upbeat album in his increasingly dark catalog, 2005’s Awake Is The New Sleep, requiring him to compose acceptance speeches for best male artist, best independent release and single of the year wins at home. Lee’s impressive string of successes continued with 2007’s Ripe, but the streak stopped with 2009’s The Rebirth Of Venus. The quasi-concept album of Lee’s ruminations on women was almost universally derided as half-baked philosophical twaddle set to a weirdly diverse pop soundtrack. Simultaneously, he was also examining the inherent power of dreams with Dr. Jan Lloyd, whose death last year inspired Lee to again brave the concept-album waters with Deeper Into Dream (Dangerbird), a loosely threaded set about the mind movies our brains script, direct and discard every single night. Lee will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Lee: It probably sounds very “corporate” and uncool to indie-rockers around the world, but there is a great new generation of what could be called “professional songwriters” out here in LA. Their days consist of creating songwriting sessions in various combinations, going from one studio to the next, endlessly, all in the attempt to nail the next great song. It’s not uncommmon for these kinds of songwriters to write at least a song (if not two) a day, six or seven days a week. I’ve dipped my toes into that world, and learned a lot from the great writers I’ve worked with, people like Tim Myers and MoZella and lots of others who just seem to effortlessly tap into the great hook-factory in the sky. Ultimately, I’m probably a little too left-of-center to make a real “job” out of writing the way a lot of these guys have, but it’s cool to see how many people still hold the craft of songwriting in such high esteem and try to bring their A-game to it each day.

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