Amherst

Four-Color Revolution

Protest that got your hands dirty

Potty Mouth: "It Is Not Our Job To Teach The Rest of the World How To Not Be Assholes"

Potty Mouth is a rock band from Western Massachusetts. With the exception of singer/guitarist Abby Weems, who graduated from high school last year, the members of the band either attended Northampton's Smith College (bassist Ally Einbinder and guitarist Phoebe Harris are graduates) or currently atte ... More >>

GREEN MIND

Dinosaur Jr. takes 
Terminal 5 back in time

Q&A: D.T. Max on Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story, David Foster Wallace's Influence, and Undertaking the Biography of an Author of a Generation

Q&A: Violent Bullshit On The Story Behind Their Name, OFF! Not Being Hardcore, And Their Parents Coming To Their Shows

Violent Bullshit is, indeed, the shit. The band's five members—vocalist Jayson Green, dueling guitarists Byron Kalet and Andrew Reuland, bassist Matt Cash and drummer Dan Crowell—profusely bleed hardcore and its ethos on their face-ripping, manically ragin' yet ridiculously meticulous 14 ... More >>

Q&A: Grasshopper's Josh Millrod And Jesse DeRosa On The Electric Valve Instrument, Working In Advertising, And Improvisation

Every Grasshopper jam starts with a great big nothing sound, on or near the cusp of silence, so soft and unassuming that it almost isn't there. Then, ever-so-glacially, the frame fills with sound: Josh Millrod's penetrative trumpeting fed through the maw of Jesse DeRosa's distortion-hemorrhaging Ele ... More >>

Department of Environmental Protection Clarifies Fracking E-Mail (UPDATE)

Mayor Mike Bloomberg has had his share of public reservations about hydrofracking, urging government honchos to keep drilling far from NYC's water. The City's environmental agency is on board, too. But a strange little newsletter released this afternoon from the Department of Environmental Protect ... More >>

Premiere: Hear "Jack Smith" By The Avant-Rock Pioneers Supreme Dicks

Later this month Jagjaguwar is going to reissue the complete catalog of Supreme Dicks, an early-college-rock-era, Amherst-based band with a loosely revolving cast of characters and an unabashedly bleak outlook. Sound of the City has a taste of the reissues: an MP3 of the early Supreme Dicks track "J ... More >>

Verizon Workers in the Bronx Take Picketing to Job Site in the Field (VIDEO)

Striking Verizon employees confront workers on a pole on Alexander Avenue in the Bronx​As the Verizon strike enters its fifth day, we've come across various picket lines near Verizon buildings, here in the East Village and around the city. But what we hadn't witnessed until today was a scene w ... More >>

Julia Cho's Tale of the Tongue

Our interview with The Language Archive playwright

In Important Questions: Where Does the Word 'Cocktail' Come From?

What's in a name?​While there has been some debate over the origins of the word "cocktailian," an even more pressing etymological dispute is at hand: where does the word "cocktail" come from? Some say Antoine Peychaud, a Creole pharmacist and the creator of Peychaud's bitters, coined the term ... More >>

New York America's 256th Most Dangerous City

​CQ Press, which apparently does this every year, has listed the 393 most dangerous U.S. cities with populations over 70,000 based on FBI statistics. Camden, New Jersey is #1, replacing last year's winner, New Orleans, which plummeted to sixth place (but then, they had an asterisk in 2008); Ne ... More >>

The Wesleyan Mafia: MGMT, Boy Crisis, Amazing Baby

How a Connecticut liberal arts school became the epicenter of surrealist Brooklyn pop

POETIC LICENSE

Ridge Theater celebrates Emily Dickinson

When Free Radicals Become Free Agents

Thurston Moore goes folk, exploits Starbucks, and walks his dog, Merzbow

Burning Down the House

The literati get some heat in Brock Clarke's blazing comic novel

Twisted Spitzer

Note to good-guy governor-elect: 10 reasons to stay Hevesi’s execution

Mr. Happy

In a law professor's debut novel, Homo academicus meets pseudologia fantastica

1966–1975 Peace & Protest

From the Summer of Love to Women's Lib, Gay Rights and Black Panthers

Coming of Age

1976–1985: Punk to Pomo, Basquiat to Breakdancing

It's Alive!

The adventures of Ilan Stavans, radical lexicographer and Spanglish champion

Debunk'd

The CFI's campus crusade for common sense

Co-Ed Blues

Scholarship student learns she shouldn't go home again

The Sons and Daughters of Liberty

'All of Us Are in Danger'

Misguided Multiculturalism

Our Historical Illiteracy

Sliding Speech

Do Some People Deserve More Free Speech than Others?