iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 7h

Never understood the business case behind AI messages asking to promote your book, but I’m WAY more confused by fake readers offering to buy me dinner.

Hi John,
I live in the DC area and read biographies because I like seeing familiar events through the choices of the people who lived them. Backbeats looks like a different way into music history, through the drummers who often sit just outside the spotlight.
I'd love to hear how you chose the people who could carry that story.
If you're around DC, could I buy you dinner sometime? I'm curious what surprised you most while researching the book.
Best,

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Jeff Weiss @passionweiss.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Max Roach performing a drum solo on a set of Hollywood Tronic drums, live on the Italian television program Senza Reta (1968)

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Thread. Mighty Sparrow was a political artist, calypso is a social music in every sense. Great breakdown here of how that is.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If you don't know this legend, Van Dyke Parks produced a tremendous 70s LP that serves as a beautiful starting point. True folk music, and so much fun.

mightysparrow.bandcamp.com

Hot and Sweet, by The Mighty Sparrow

10 track album

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Thread. This crap is so dumb. But more importantly, a waste.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This version of "I Want to Talk About You" is the song that helped me understand him. A delightful love song turned into a heavy-metal-intense group ballad, then lifted into the stratosphere when the band drops out and JC goes on solo. Breathtaking performance.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

🚨BUZZKILL ALERT🚨 The NYT’s move towards big canon-making feature lists is frankly depressing, a waste of resources for one of the last remaining US newspaper arts sections that has them. Boutique crowd sourcing, online argument starters…who cares?

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Duncan Sheik played a solo show at my college freshman orientation, just him on guitar on the patio of my dorm while a few hundred distracted 18 yr olds ignored him. For some reason I was a huge fan of this Nick Drake-inspired record so it was funny to go inside and see him alone in the lounge.

Duncan Sheik’s Phantom Moon cd, inscribed to me in 2003.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This is the most full-bore rock album Costello ever made and it contains two of his deepest ballads for good measure. “I Want You” is classic nasty-sarcastic mode but “Battered Old Bird” is simply one of the greatest things he ever recorded.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Just one man's opinion but the version of Shelter From the Storm on Hard Rain is a top 10 all-time Dylan performance, and the stage outfits here only improve it.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The new Tubs album is out today and if you like guitars and joy, you can’t beat em. The singer sounds less like Richard Thompson on every album and the guitarist sounds more like Johnny Marr. They are a pure good.

youtu.be

The Tubs - Stoop to Me (Official Music Video)

YouTube video by Merge Records on YouTube

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The headline would be the worst thing that most people would do in public in their lifetime, but i promise by paragraph 4 you’ll be ready to file your own restraining order against this fella.

playbill.com

Man Sentenced to 2-Year Jail Sentence After Strangling Fellow Theatregoer for Singing Along During We Will Rock You

The dust-up happened at a 2023 press performance in London's West End.

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Brian “Enemy of Civilization” Alexander @brianralexander.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

OK, well, Labor Day is over and I think it's time to start shamelessly promoting my new book. It publishes December 1 but is available for pre-order (go indie!) now. I am going to create this running thread, and add to it daily, so forewarned.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

This is one of most “real heads know” novels on earth. Nothing better than The End of Vandalism.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

“Hitsville USA” was a great way for a 90s adolescent to get all the Motown greatest hits and discover the depth of their B- and C-level singles. “Back to Mono” totally reconfigured my sense of “60s Music” and gave me songs I still consider favorites, like “Long Way to Be Happy.”

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Me to announce Gov. Moore is an idiot.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Read this in tribute to the departed and it’s psychotically well researched, though Marsh was blustery even by the standards of first-gen rock writing. Can’t ever resist easy, unnecessary swipes at Sammy Hagar, Boy George, etc. But as an argument for the importance of trash, it’s a powerful delight.

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Mike Janssen @mjanssen.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I love this explanation of where Kurt Wagner got the Lambchop name

Quote from Kurt Wagner: “When pretty women say Lambchop, their faces end in an upturned smile as opposed to a frown, and that made the decision for me– that, and I was sick of dealing with it. I figured nobody was gonna fucking call their band Lambchop. It was stupid enough that no one would sue us.”

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Bryan Curtis @bryancurtis.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Jimmy Breslin on Gloria Steinem Esquire, 8/92 (the same issue had John Updike on Dolly)

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Bowiesongs (C. O'Leary) @bowiesongs.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

"It’s your responsibility as a jazz musician not to adulterate, but to augment, to extend, to amplify, to reconfigure, because that’s the whole foundation, that’s the whole basis of this music, jazz." Cassandra Wilson, interviewed by Glenn O'Brien, 1999: bombmagazine.org/articles/199...

CW No. It’s your responsibility as a jazz musician not to adulterate, but to augment, to extend, to amplify, to reconfigure, because that’s the whole foundation, that’s the whole basis of this music, jazz. That’s why it’s considered to be derived more from an African aesthetic than a European aesthetic. It’s dynamic and life can enter into it. There’s a parallel between the religion and the music. It’s a living music, as is the religion—that has not been really acknowledged as a part of that tradition, but I think the two parallel each other. Religion goes through so many manifestations in order to survive.

hat’s a large part of the methodology in bebop. You take things and turn them upside down. Bird did that constantly. You write tunes over tunes. Then people come along who will write tunes over his tunes. Throughout the tradition of jazz you have people constantly rearranging the music and calling it something new. I talk about this on the set when I do “Prancing,” which is a tune derived from Miles Davis’s original, “original” called “Francing,” but if you break it down and you slow it down and listen to the main melody line, it’s a blues lick from Muddy Waters. And I’m sure that somebody else wrote it a long time before Muddy Waters. It’s a basic blues lick—everybody knows it, everybody plays it. Muddy Waters created a song based on that motif. Miles Davis came along and added a bebopping inflection to it, threw some triplet fields inside of it and called it “Francing.” Change the chords that ride beneath the melody and it becomes a bebop standard.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

This is shocking and awful. Saw her multiple times, including at the Blue Note and the Apollo. An incredible talent that I didn't fully grasp til seeing her perform. Her breathy, quiet voice overtook every room. In her tone and expansive approach to covers, she struck me as the vocal Bill Frisell.

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Sarah Hennies @sarahhennies.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Lambchop, quite possibly the band that has been "one of my favorites" longer than any other, have released a stunning and beautifully minimalist new album in which midway into the first song a DJ tag shouts "LAMBCHOP! NEW SHIT!" and nothing like that ever happens again. Incredible.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I love all the better-known New Hollywood directors, Altman most of all, but this run is flawless. No one did more, more successfully, in the decade.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I read the book about…the bear…and the lady…ahem… And it’s amazing. 140 pages, exactly what it needs to be, an unavoidably lurid premise given utmost gravity and symbolic/descriptive weight. Similar to Annie Dillard or Gretel Erlich, but about things only fiction can reach. In every sense, wild.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

In the future everyone will collaborate with Mike Patton for 15 minutes.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Great idea for an essay, and happy to see the great @peoplesbooktakoma.com speaking about their success.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Guess I’ll have to make do with positive reviews from the New Yorker, WSJ, Variety, Tom Scharpling, and Richard Thompson.

johnlingan.com

A Song for Everyone — John Lingan

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Greil Marcus saw my CCR bio & summarily dismissed it because “this story, not that expansive or emblematic of that much outside of itself in the first place, had been pushed, mined, or exploited as far as it would go.” Didn’t even mention the title or my name. It’s A SONG FOT EVERYONE btw.

CCR ended in ashes. You wrote the liner notes to their greatest hits collection Chronicle back in 76, if you had a rewrite, would you say anything else after all this time has passed? -
JAMES R STACHO

I was at my local bookstore the other day and noticed a book on Creedence that I didn't know. I looked at the publication page and was surprised to see that it had come out just a few years ago.
I would have thought this story, not that expansive or emblematic of that much outside of itself in the
first place, had been pushed, mined, or exploited as far as it would go. A little band, scorned by its so-called peers in San Francisco, comes out of a Berkeley-adjoining town no one's ever heard of and where no one ever goes and makes no effort to be part of any scene. Their story has no hook, their first album gets panned in Rolling Stone by its then best reviewer, Barry Gifford, who goes on to write widely read novels and David Lynch movies, and yet, as another reviewer, I think Bruce Miroff, puts it, they have a sound that can cut through the static on the cheapest car radio. Maybe that's the best image of the band: someone blasting the radio and shouting whatever song it is out the window.
And it'll be "Up Around the Bend" and you'll spend the rest of the day wondering why it sounds

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Rewatched RACHEL GETTING MARRIED. Still marvelous, possibly the best Demme. Anne Hathway & (esp) Bill Irwin never better, plus a rare & regal Debra Winger. A harrowing sobriety drama featuring appearances by Tunde Adebimpe, Robyn Hitchcock, Fab Five Freddy, Sister Carol & Cyro Baptista. Masterpiece.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

just imagine the woman who sang “Blue Bayou” being like, “No, obviously, SHE’S the lead vocalist.”

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Simon & Graceland embodied "adulthood" to me as a kid and as an adult I hope I never hear either again. His lyrical and literal voices have never evolved, never even intensified. Purred faux-profundities crowding out astounding backing musicians. At least this doesn't have any fingerpicked guitar.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

This is the day the lord has made.* *Seeing NRBQ at the Ottobar tonight.

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Happy New Lambchop Day to the chosen people (Lambchop fans). This record is so good not even Justin Vernon can ruin it.

youtube.com

Lambchop - Punching the Clown (Full Album Stream)

YouTube video by Lambchop

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

In 2017 I wrote a monthly column for Hazlitt about the first baseball season under Trump, mostly to see how an almost pathologically "apolitical" league responded to the creep of fascism. Very curious what statements get made after this and I don't anticipate being pleasantly surprised.

theguardian.com

San Diego Padres minor-league staffer detained by ICE after arrest in Texas

Padres catching coordinator was stopped at an El Paso airport while returning from a work trip as his family and DHS disputed his immigration status

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

John Crowley, author of my favorite book, “Little, Big,” recently died so I’m doing this one back to front for the first time. He was just marvelous, so erudite & creative and never afraid to leave strange occurrences unexplained. Hope there’s an updated version soon with his final decades’ stories.

Novelties & Souvenirs
Collected Short Fiction
JOHN CROWLEY

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John Lingan @johnlingan.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Been looking for years for Larry Brown’s out of print memoir of his 17-year career as fireman and eventually fire chief of Oxford, Mississippi. Finally found it at Myopic Books in Chicago and surprise it’s fantastic. He fought fires while writing the astounding early fiction.

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The Tonearm @thetonearm.com · 17/08/2026

"I don't have to be an expert on it to have a slant on it, to have an opinion on it. I think for me, it should not get too heavy. I like joy, I like celebration, I like having a good time. That's a huge part of me." Don't miss Lawrence Peryer's interview with Terri Lyne Carrington on The Tonearm:

thetonearm.com

The Whole of Me — Terri Lyne Carrington Beyond the Drum Kit

The NEA Jazz Master and four-time Grammy winner talks through a dance album about deportation and prison abolition, the Buddhist line she lives by, and the years she has gone without proper time to practice drums.

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Alfred Soto @sotoalfred.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

I've got no Dave Marsh stories. He wrote a book I thumbed through often at B. Dalton and other mall bookstores that saved my aesthetic life. Dave Marsh wrote one of thee essential books. My brief obit. wp.me/pzXeC-lBI

wp.me

Dave Marsh — RIP

If readers in 1990 lived in a small town or in a small town like Miami posing as a city, the B. Daltons and Waldenbooks at the local mail saved your life. Dadeland and International malls carried t…

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