Latest issue ·
Slow News - Happy Birthday, America, I guess
Heya Jay here.
While a bunch of the country lines up behind the dumb flag (this would be a good place for a raspberry emoji if only there was one), we're going to do what we do best: open the doors, feed people, play good music loud and fix some bikes.
We'll be open all day on July 4th, serving free vegan & heartless American hot dogs to anyone who wanders in. Homemade vegan chili on hand for chili dogs (I do maintain Chicago-style is the best hot dog so we'll have those fixin's too) Nothing else, really, just a hot dog and a place to be.
On the soundtrack: Marisa Anderson's The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music. It's a pointed flip of Harry Smith's famous 1952 folk anthology. Anderson set herself one rule - collect folk music only from the places the United States has been at war with in her lifetime, from 1970 onward: Southeast Asia, the USSR, the Arab and Islamic world. She pulled roughly 900 songs from Harry Smith's private archive, rebuilt the liner notes by hand, and wrestled with every translation. Her question: "Who are the people we've been told are 'unamerican'. And what have we lost in the fallout from that label?"