Considering Chuck Klosterman kicks off his new book of essays, Eating the Dinosaur, with a piece about the inherent lack of truth in interviews, especially his own, it only makes sense to skirt the straight-up Q&A and angle for something the man might not want to lie about. Sure, there’s a risk Klosterman might not take the bait (“I don’t feel it’s my obligation to respond to anything…”), yet 99 times out of 99, he probably will (“still, I provide answers to every question I encounter, even if I don’t know what I should say”). So, instead of asking him to answer questions, per se, and risk a variable truthiness, we thought we’d get a better bead on the word-worker at work if he told us what music he plays while he’s reading and writing.

Read More »

If there’s an image in the history of American presidential politics that’s more ubiquitous than Shepard Fairey’s “Hope” portrait, it can only be found on the face of our legal tender. But Fairey’s now legendary work was only one in a sea of stellar images inspired by Obama and his legendary quest for the White House. Fairey and Evolutionary Media Group founder Jennifer Gross collect much of the best of that historic time in Art for Obama: Designing Manifest Hope and the Campaign for Change, a 181-page compendium of the campaign’s artistry.

Flavorpill got with Fairey on the eve of Art for Obama‘s release and just a day after the White House succumbed to conservative pressure and allowed noted Obama culture op Yosi Sergant to secede from the NEA limelight. Here’s some of what he had to say about it all. Read More »

It’s highly unlikely that Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan envisioned running a label twenty years after founding Merge Records; after all, they “never [even] had a five year plan.” [emphasis added] But that’s what they’ve found themselves doing. And it just so happens that what began “as a lark” is now one of the most successful labels in the country.

Indeed “Merge’s slow and steady rise from Laura’s bedroom to the Billboard Top Ten is, in many ways, an object lesson in what went wrong with the major labels.” And John Cook’s excellent chronicle of the rise, Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label That Got Big and Stayed Small, can be considered an object lesson in what goes right when someone truly digs the music. But Ballance and McCaughan aren’t just avid fans, of course; they’re players with a fan base of their very own. In fact, their band Superchunk is both a large part of Merge’s success and one of the most influential indie bands ever. Read More »

It’s been ten years since Moby released the phenomenal Play, and a full 20 since his career began. And while 1991′s Go got him known as the face of rave and techno, and Play put him at the forefront of electronic superstars, he means much more than a beat on a dance floor. Moby’s latest LP, Wait for Me, with its whispered heartbreak and swaths of near ambience, pretty much proves it, too.

But that’s not all Moby’s up to on stage these days. So Earplug called him to find out what fans can expect from his live show. His North American tour began last night in Baltimore. Read More »

Free has a bit of a buzz about it these days — free drinks, free downloads, free lunch. In fact, the concept is so hot that Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson wrote a book about it (Free: The Future of a Radical Price), and then digitally gave it away. But of all the “freemiums” and “freepstakes” out there, here at Flavorpill we’ve yet to come across something that’s more buzzworthy than Virgin Mobile FreeFest.

Going down on August 30 on the grounds of Baltimore’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, the free festival features an onslaught of new, old and unexpected acts, including Franz Ferdinand, Weezer, Public Enemy and Blink 182. Better yet: It’s for a damn good cause — a $5 suggested donation goes toward preventing youth homelessness, a rampant and too often ignored problem that more and more kids in America face each day. And if you act fast and do some volunteer work, you can earn “Free I.P.” tickets to the show.

Flavorpill got with Virgin Mobile’s Ron Faris to see what the hot fuss was about; here’s what he told us. Read More »