Email Author Sarah Vowell

1996 Stories by Sarah Vowell

• Suspicious Minds

  published December 25, 1996

  The 1996 Musical Top 10 and Then Some -- because lists are fun. Top 10: 1) Sleater-Kinney, Call the Doctor (Chainsaw) Was there a... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published December 18, 1996

  Some of the best books invoking pop this year didn't write about music so much as write around it. In these authors' hands, music becomes a... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published December 11, 1996

  Remember when organized religion meant stately elders, imposing architecture, and a penchant for heavy-handed dignity? You can sum up... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published December 4, 1996

  Eddie Vedder is bad. I know that because I read it in Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone, which is good, says Eddie Vedder is bad so he must be bad.... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published November 27, 1996

  It was never only a test. Not to me, anyway. Is there a more quintessential postwar American sound than that jarring, interminable beep? Or that... More >>

• Beer-Soaked Lambs

  published November 20, 1996

  The week before the election, I spoke to a friend who had just returned from Kansas -- Lawrence, not Russell -- where he and his wife were invited... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published November 20, 1996

  There are two adjoining rooms I've grown to love in a house in another city where friendship and music cannot be separated from each other. A... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published November 13, 1996

  Emily Shore, a young daughter of the last century, had been "coughing up blood since the dogwoods bloomed." Right before she died, she hacked off... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published October 30, 1996

  Her name alone would suffice for the purposes of imposed romance. Garrison Starr. Garrison: such a patriarchal fortress of a title to signify a... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published October 23, 1996

  Listening to history can be as cheap and easy as handing over 50 cents on a Saturday afternoon. One of the scratchy old records I bought on the... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published October 16, 1996

  Sometimes I think that my ongoing obsession with pop songs has less to do with a feel for sound and more to do with the way that I cannot sustain... More >>

• Recordings

  published October 9, 1996

  Galaxie 500 (Rykodisc) Between 1988 and 1990, Galaxie 500 made three beautiful albums awash in spacey, psychedelic pop. Then, for... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published October 9, 1996

  There comes a time in the middle of any half-way decent liberal arts major's college career when she no longer has any idea what she believes. She... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published October 2, 1996

  Art can be measured. Take pop songs, for instance: Just about any old tune can sound at least OK on a car radio, but how many pass the Dishwashing... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published September 25, 1996

  It was a perfect capitalism moment. I was riding the 21 Hayes bus home up Market, reading Lee Friedlander's introduction to his new book of... More >>

• Hear This

  published September 25, 1996

  Junior Brown The surface appeal of Austin's Junior Brown is manifold -- the jokey album titles (Guit With It, Junior High), the chuckling... More >>

• Recordings

  published September 18, 1996

  Various Artists Supernatural Fairy Tales: The Progressive Rock Era, Volume 1 (Rhino) Despite having sunk deeper than the... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published September 18, 1996

  Long-distance love affair by cassette tape: It happened to me. While digital romances grow increasingly common, our strange fling was quaintly... More >>

• Recordings

  published September 11, 1996

  Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Songs and Music From the Motion Picture "She's the One" (Warner Bros.) One thing can be said... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published September 11, 1996

  A small man on a big stage looks and sounds far, far away. It's not just physical distance that separates him from the rest of us. Years and years... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published September 4, 1996

  The immortal question Who has the best hair in the history of rock 'n' roll? Part 2: Jim DeRogatis, author of Kaleidoscope Eyes:... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published August 28, 1996

  Is there a more Important Question than this: Who has the best hair in the history of rock 'n' roll? Like any red-blooded American girl,... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published August 21, 1996

  Buried inside a recent New York Times review of a performance by ex-Replacements bigwig Paul Westerberg, writer Neil Strauss relates that... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published August 14, 1996

  In 1951, when John Cage saw his friend Robert Rauschenberg's series of White Paintings, he called them "airports for the lights, shadows, and... More >>

• Suspicious Minds

  published August 7, 1996

  "To me hoop-de-hoop de hi ho/ Along the narrow strand." I had never seen those words in print, but they rushed at my face like a familiar smell.... More >>