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wendy ortizWhat are you working on now?

My next book is slated for release in November 2014 from Writ Large Press. Hollywood Notebook is a prose poem-ish memoir-ish book of over 80 short chapters that was originally a blog I kept from roughly 2002 to 2004. It’s a book of ideas, appropriated text, lists, dips into the abyss, and the kind of joy and darkness one gets hit by when they’re in the middle of a Saturn return and Pluto transit.

AGAINST THE GRAIN: Thinking about the Voice in Pop

(originally published in Melody Maker,November 20, 1993)

Most rock-crit doesn’t have much to do with rock as music. Usually it’s amateur sociology, or Eng-Lit analysis of lyrics, or biography/gossip. But even those who do grapple with music-as-music seldom get much purchase on the Voice, beyond saying a particular voice is ‘great’ or ‘original’, or gushing superlatives.And that’s because the Voice is a mystery, defying analysis.It’s hard to say why one voice leaves you cold and another pierces the marrow of your soul, gets in your pants, fits you like a glove.