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The CHIRP Blog
Clarence Ewing: The Million Year Trip writesMovie Review: “Flannery”
by Kyle Sanders
There are many celebrated female writers, but very few who have the eccentricity of Flannery O'Connor. Her southern upbringing mixed with an unmovable Roman Catholic faith concocted a sardonic, grotesque mentality that crafted some of the greatest Southern Gothic stories in American literature.
With such a rich and prolific imagination, it's hard to believe her writing career was so brief, having been cut short by Lupus, which would claim her life at the age of thirty-nine. Now, debuting just days before what would have been her ninety-sixth birthday, PBS' American Masters series is releasing a documentary about her life, simply titled Flannery.
Co-directed, written, and produced by Elizabeth Coffman and Mark Bosco, Flannery examines the astonishing life of a self-proclaimed "shy, inarticulate" woman who yearned for "a cool, sophisticated wit." Growing up in Milledgeville, Georgia, O'Connor had an early sense of mortality as a child and a level of creativity where the profane blended with the sacred.
KSanders writesMovie Review: “WOJNAROWICZ: [EXPLETIVE] YOU [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE]”
by Kyle Sanders
I consider myself a proficient scholar when it comes to LGBTQ history: I've learned about the early pioneers, the Stonewall Riots, and the continuing struggles that still linger. But if you had ever name dropped David Wojnarowicz in a related conversation, I would have reacted like a deer in the headlights, and looked a fool.
But a fool, I am no longer. The creators behind RuPaul's Drag Race have produced a fiery and fearless portrait of the multimedia artist and AIDS activist, which they have appropriately titled WOJNAROWICZ: F**K YOU F*GGOT F**KER.
With an in-your-face, scandalous title like that, you get an idea of what you're in for. Stitched and sewn together with archived footage, photos, and answering machine tape recordings from the artist's personal archives, director Chris McKim crafts an absorbing collage that sucks you into the gritty cesspool of Wojnarowicz's early years of hustling on the streets of Hell's Kitchen, then spits you out in the aftermath of a post-AIDS gentrified world, where Wojnarowicz's viscerally breathtaking body of work continues to be rediscovered.
CHIRP Radio writesCHIRP Radio Weekly Voyages (Mar 15 - Mar 21)
On the Podcast:
- DJ Mick talks with Jesse Cash of ERRA
On the Blog:
- DJ Nikki Stout reviews L.W. by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
Top of the CHIRP Charts for the week of 3/8/21:
Stereolab – Electrically Possessed (Switched On Volume 4) (Warp/Duophonic)
Nikki Stout writesAlbum Review: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s “L.W.”
As a follow up to 2020’s K.G., King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard return with L.W.—the second half of a double album recorded entirely in quarantine by each member of the sixtet.
Make no mistake: This is a complete and fully realized effort from the band, whose genre-bending foray into Latin and Indian beats perfectly platforms its love for distorted guitars. This album is proggy, it’s funky, it’s purple and yellow and a bubbling witches’ brew of certifiably fun music taking on very serious subjects, as King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are want to do.
Concerns over climate change have made their way onto King Gizzard’s lyric sheet before and they arise again on L.W. This band has never taken their role as the bridge between psych rock and green metal for granted, and at this point the bridge is 8 miles wide. This is a good thing.
CHIRP Radio writesCHIRP Radio Weekly Voyages (Mar 8 - Mar 14 2021)
On the Podcast:
- Marjorie Alford interviews George Arthur Calendar
On the Blog:
- Nikki Stout reviews Carnage by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis
Top of the CHIRP Charts for the week of 3/1/21:
The Purcells – Landscape Listens (self-released)