PicoBlog

Last week, there was another shakeup in the college football world when the Big Ten announced its new future members, UCLA and USC — a move that was simultaneously surprising and predictable. We’ve been headed toward this inevitability at least since Texas and Oklahoma decided to join the SEC, and probably years before that, when ESPN lowballed Jim Delany and he responded by creating the Big Ten Network. And it seems like we’ll soon have two superconferences, dictated by a Fox vs.

Dear friends and supporters: Sharon and I are on the road this week. This issue of CultureChange will consist of four interrelated vignettes, brief but important. It’s a mouthful, but “immanentizing the eschaton” has a precise and vital meaning that’s worth pondering during these tumultuous days. It was coined by the political philosopher Eric Voegelin. It’s the modern attempt to yank the full blessings of the consummate (future, post-Second Advent, eternal) state back into our present history and in so doing, wreak social havoc.

I offer commentary and observations that many will regard as trivial, immaterial, or impertinent. However, my writing style will almost always provide a unique perspective you probably haven't considered. By Bill french · Launched a year agoNo thanksncG1vNJzZmihnaWys8DIp5ynrF6owqO%2F05qapGaTpLpw

My original interview with Snapcase, which appeared in the Summer 1995 issue of Anti-Matter, kind of felt like a breakthrough: Having been dogged with a bizarre (and unearned) “tough guy” reputation for the first two years of their career, these interviews—with all five members of the band at the time—allowed for an opportunity to show us who they were in fact. What they revealed was a complex, but thoughtful portrait of five hardcore kids in separate, but similar stages of self-discovery.

In my mind, the Refused story is still one of the most improbable hardcore success stories of all time. When I first met them in 1993, they were a band of upstart vegan straight-edge kids opening the Swedish leg of a Shelter tour I was playing on. I still don’t remember any of the other European bands we played with that year, but Refused were determined to leave an impression on us—and they did.

My first interview with J. Robbins, exactly 30 years ago in February of 1994, did not go well. Or at least that’s what I thought when we were in the middle of it: Following an innocent opening question about his first crush, the legendary Jawbox frontman became increasingly defensive and almost gleefully combative. When I got home to transcribe the interview, however, I realized that J.’s honest reaction—as frustrating as it was—also worked to tell us more about who he was and where he was in his life than most interviews ever could with words.

In the four years since releasing their self-titled EP, Scowl have shown a sense of fearlessness and exploration that have made them one of hardcore’s most talked-about bands. But along with that newfound attention comes a persistent feeling of scrutiny, and while singer Kat Moss has been dealing with much of it in private, she recently made headlines for issuing a sharp and very public rebuke of some of the more egregious criticism—and specifically, the clearly gendered accusations of Scowl being “industry plants.

I was fourteen years old the first time I saw 7 Seconds, so when I tell you they altered the course of my life, I really can’t be more literal. As one of the key architects of hardcore punk as we know it, Kevin Seconds contributed a unique point of view that spoke for kids like me: Kids who were angry, but not cynical. Kids who were hardened by circumstance, but sensitive by nature.

Occasionally, I “step in some shit”  on social media. And by “step in some shit,” I mean that every now and then I will comment or respond to a hot-button conversation, and my comment gets met with hundreds of replies that fall somewhere on the spectrum of “brilliant analysis” to “you’re a moron that needs to deactivate your account, then go jump in a bed of fire ants.” Yesterday was one of those instances.