• Home
  • About
    • CultureCrash: The Blog
    • Culture Crash: The Book
    • Scott Timberg
    • Contact
  • Culture Crash: The Book
    • Culture Crash: The Book
    • Book Events
  • Other AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

CultureCrash

Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

You are here: Home / Archives for Scott Timberg

Eagle Rock and Small Business

January 14, 2010 by Scott Timberg

TONIGHT I go to a wake of sorts for Paper, a shop on Eagle Rock's Colorado Boulevard. The shop sold cool books, smart gifts, letterpress printed cards, and leather journals -- exactly the kind of combination that signals the arrival of a neighborhood into bobo heaven.The closing of the store -- done in by the recession, of course -- is especially poignant because owner Shannon Bedell lost another … [Read more...]

Robert Crais vs. LA Noir

January 11, 2010 by Scott Timberg

TOMORROW is the release date for the new novel by Robert Crais, "The First Rule." Crime fiction aficionados know Crais as a deft, literate writer with a strong sense of place and of social history -- one of the great inheritors of Ross Macdonald in the world of West Coast noir.HERE is my profile of Crais, who is one of the best adjusted novelists I've ever spoken to -- someone who seems … [Read more...]

Elmore Leonard Goes to Kentucky

January 8, 2010 by Scott Timberg

ONE of the programs that showed me that television could, at its rare best, offer the quality of acting, direction, set design and thematic development of the finest films was "Deadwood," that saga of the Wild West that HBO cancelled after three all-too-short seasons.So it's exciting for me -- and the few dozen others who followed the show -- that "Deadwood" sheriff Timothy Olyphant will star as a … [Read more...]

Alan Alda vs. Science

January 6, 2010 by Scott Timberg

AMONG the very few things yours truly has in common with Alan Alda is a love of science. (Though my wife tells me he was her first crush, so there may be a joke in here somewhere.)In any case, it was as pleasure to have a beer with the star of the most successful tv show of all time and discuss the new three-part special he's hosting on PBS, "The Human Spark." The show tries to get at what makes … [Read more...]

Knocked Out by The xx

January 4, 2010 by Scott Timberg

Is there an equivalent of air guitar for great production? If not, what is their weird urge to turn knobs, balance tones and make a record as brilliant as this one when I play the debut by London's The xx? It's my favorite record of '09 that didn't end up on Spin's Top 40 list.While the album -- just called "xx" --  has been a huge critical hit in the UK (the NME review here), it's still undersung … [Read more...]

Happy Birthday Junot Diaz (and Happy New Year to You)

December 31, 2009 by Scott Timberg

TODAY is, by most accounts, the end of a decade -- and a mostly bad one at that. But it gives us here at the Misread City some pleasure to nod to a writer of the oughts who we're hoping will be an even bigger figure in the 2010s. Today is the 41st birthday of Junot Diaz, author of the story collection "Drown" and the Pulitzer winning novel "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao."I spoke to Diaz … [Read more...]

Happy Saturnalia to All

December 26, 2009 by Scott Timberg

SORRY this is a few days late, I've been busy burning wax candles, praying to the god of the harvest, wearing goofy hats and drinking watered-down Roman wine, but let me wish everyone a happy Saturnalia.To those who celebrate otherwise, a happy holiday to you as well.May the New Year and its harvests smile on you. … [Read more...]

Congratulating Spoon — Alas

December 23, 2009 by Scott Timberg

FIRST of all, I'm awfully pleased that one of my favorite working bands -- the Austin/ Portland combo Spoon -- has been voted the decade's best indie rock band, American division, by the readers of The Misread City. More proof that my Steve McQueen/ '59 Miles Davis/ Audrey Hepburn- digging followers have great taste. (And an incredibly retro sensibility, but maybe that is my fault.)For this … [Read more...]

Christmas With John Fahey

December 18, 2009 by Scott Timberg

AN underrated West Coast guitarist, the great and mysterious John Fahey, is best known for gloomy, weird, angular records like "Blind Joe Death" and "The Voice of the Turtle" that begin in Charley Patton territory and in some ways anticipate the anti-folk movement. But for me, Fahey and his "American primitivist" style is most important as part of my Christmas experience, and has been for … [Read more...]

Jazz, 1959 and Today

December 17, 2009 by Scott Timberg

ONE of the exciting things in music this year was the excuse a 50th anniversary gave to us jazzheads to return to what I consider the best year ever in the history of the art form. Okay, I know that sounds like something between an advertising slogan and a gloomy denial of the ensuing 50 years. But in a year when Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Art Blakey, Dave Brubeck, Ornette Coleman, Bill Evans, … [Read more...]

« Previous Page
Next Page »

Scott Timberg

I'm a longtime culture writer and editor based in Los Angeles; my book "CULTURE CRASH: The Killing of the Creative Class" came out in 2015. My stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon and Los Angeles magazine, and I was an LA Times staff writer for six years. I'm also an enthusiastic if middling jazz and indie-rock guitarist. (Photo by Sara Scribner) Read More…

Culture Crash, the Book

My book came out in 2015, and won the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. The New Yorker called it "a quietly radical rethinking of the very nature of art in modern life"

I urge you to buy it at your favorite independent bookstore or order it from Portland's Powell's.

Culture Crash

Here is some information on my book, which Yale University Press published in 2015. (Buy it from Powell's, here.) Some advance praise: With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have known … [Read More...]

Follow Me

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

Archives

@TheMisreadCity

Tweets by @TheMisreadCity
July 2025
M T W T F S S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031  
« Dec    

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Scott Timberg Has Passed Away
  • Ojai Music Festival and JACK Quartet
  • What’s in a Name?
  • Time Pauses For Valentin Silvestrov
  • The Perverse Imagination of Edward Carey

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in