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Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

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Snapshots from the Culture Crash: 1

January 29, 2017 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar] LONGTIME music journalist Steve Mirkin has been, like a lot of us in the creative class, though a series ups and downs since the Internet remade journalism and the recession undercut the middle class. He appears briefly in my book Culture Crash. Here is an update, which begins around January 1.  It was not going to be a happy new year for me. After more than two … [Read more...]

Music To Say Goodbye To 2016 To

December 31, 2016 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar] WELL, one of the worst years in recorded history is over. Every morning, as my consciousness returns, I am reminded that Leonard Cohen, Bowie, George Martin, and my dad are dead and that a nasty, incurious bully is on the verge of becoming president. My employer, Salon, has posted a piece with a mix of happy and sad songs with which to end this year and enter the … [Read more...]

Remembering an Old Friend

November 28, 2016 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar] WHEN I was in high school, I had a slightly older friend who was eccentric, brilliant, and obscure. He had a minor speech impediment, so I couldn't always tell what he was saying, but whenever I could make it out, it was fascinating and perceptive. I met some very cool and smart people through him A few years after I left for college, I heard he got heavily into … [Read more...]

Reasons to Be Thankful: Rock n roll

November 25, 2016 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar] HERE are my 25 favorite rock records. Trying to focus on proper studio albums, so live concerts and anthologies strongly discouraged. No jazz, classical music, pure country, electronica, downtempo, acoustic blues, Jamaican, or hip hop. (I'll make an exception for R&B that relates closely to the rock tradition.) These are albums that have some personal meaning and … [Read more...]

The Powerful Influence of Leonard Cohen

November 16, 2016 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar] IT'S been a very tough year for music lovers, and the last week or so has been especially rough for other reasons. But the legacy left by the late poet/ songwriter is something to be grateful for. In my latest Salon story, I document the influence of  Cohen from the earliest covers of his songs (Judy Collins' "Suzanne," Fairport Convention's "Bird on a Wire"), … [Read more...]

“Tears of St. Peter” and the Master Chorale

November 8, 2016 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar] HERE is a piece I had not even heard of: "Lagrime di San Pietro," a chorale work by the ambiguously Italian composer Orlando di Lasso (who is usually described as Flemish). The Los Angeles Master Chorale put on this Renaissance work, directed by classical wildman Peter Sellars, about a week ago at Disney Hall. Despite my lack of knowledge of most chorale music, I took … [Read more...]

Otis Redding at the Whisky — Revisited

November 7, 2016 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar] YOU can never really have too much Otis Redding. The great R&B singer and songwriter died in a plane crash in 1967, at just 26 years old, and just about everything he recorded (included his radio spot for "Stay in School") is worth hearing. So it's good news that a legendary set of concerts -- his April 1966 shows at the Whisky a Go Go, which have been available in … [Read more...]

Billy Bragg and Joe Henry Ride the Rails

October 28, 2016 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar] WHAT happens when you take two of the best exemplars of stage patter in modern music, set them up in historic halls with old acoustic guitars, and let them unleash a set built on classic American train songs? An oddly satisfying, even at times thrilling, grownup show that made the railroad tradition seem like a central part of the American journey. Bragg is, of … [Read more...]

August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey” at the Taper

October 3, 2016 by Scott Timberg

[contextly_auto_sidebar] LAST night I caught "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" -- one of the historically earliest of August Wilson's cycle of plays about black life in the 20th century -- at the Mark Taper Forum. This production, directed by Phylicia Rashad (best known for her role on "The Cosby Show"), has been justly celebrated already, so I will just introduce it and add a few details. Despite … [Read more...]

Happy 80th to Steve Reich

October 3, 2016 by Scott Timberg

A FEW years back I spent an hour or so with Steve Reich before a concert of his work. Here is the story I wrote about the pioneering minimalist, who marks his 80th birthday today. I was struck by how down to earth Reich was, also how deep his love of Bartok seemed to be. Reich's "Different Trains" and "Music for 18 Musicians" are two of my all-time favorite pieces. Seeing the latter at Walt … [Read more...]

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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...]

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