CUNY Academic Commons | helldriver | Activity https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/members/helldriver/activity/ Activity feed for helldriver. Sat, 01 Jan 2050 18:00:18 -0500 https://buddypress.org/?v= en 30 hourly 2 4841e3e8cd87c81c9760deec45502ebe helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1233 Fri, 29 May 2026 20:16:30 -0400 Anika Makes a SetlistA play in one act   A music studio. Amplifiers line the back wall, framed records hang in the spaces between them, gold, platinum. A few […]

]]> 3bb99d4bd729e5d0847428327a541d63 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1221 Sat, 16 May 2026 15:46:32 -0400 Frankenstein's Wolves                                              An open letter to Guillermo del Toro Dear Guillermo, My partner and I went to see your Frank […]

]]> a1f7ae924d4c60f356e971f2668b7eb2 helldriver commented on the post, Domenico in the Heart, on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2021/03/28/domenico-in-the-heart/comment-page-1/#comment-571263 Sun, 12 Apr 2026 14:33:54 -0400 Thank you both so much for your comments! And an enormous congratulations to Richard on his Nimbus recordings.

]]> 48e28bf17cec6260575db42eff31156c helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1161 Sat, 09 Jul 2022 22:13:19 -0400 "Nine" Years in the Pit: Farewell!Okay, so really my thirteenth year began a few months ago. Like an errant post (i.e., all of them), this nine-year writing-about-music […]

]]> 7ec1bbe6f0631ae8f8fec36032063528 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1154 Thu, 16 Jun 2022 15:23:18 -0400 A bit of kibble that grew too big for its britches …

 

In Thinking About Music (Massachusetts UP, 1983), Lewis Rowell offers the following about the aesthetic experience: “The single most vital prec […]

]]> 6689adb89d7591a370cda471f8956025 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1138 Sun, 08 May 2022 22:16:48 -0400 KibbleAn abecedarium of unfinished posts, fledgling thoughts, broadsides, aphorisms, quotations, addenda, notes, interludes, promenades, […]

]]> 65badade266e2098d4beb555e556cd7e helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1129 Sat, 08 Jan 2022 22:40:00 -0500 Archaeology of NoiseThis essay about listening to Bushwick, written back in 2004-5, was originally supposed to see light through a grad school friend’s small p […]

]]> 1af7e871f51f2b943d928f4ea31cca53 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1114 Wed, 08 Sep 2021 19:26:59 -0400 Rubies & Resurrections In Jhumpa Lahiri’s charming short story “This Blessed House,” one of the finest in her prizewinning debut collection Interpreter of Malad […]

]]> 2309c74f2d31e2bd47ca1c15f284ca6d helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1094 Sat, 01 May 2021 18:50:57 -0400 If hindsight is 20/20, then Vio-lence was the greatest thrash metal band, period: the band in which the subgenre climaxed, and in particular the Bay Area sound that was its epicenter and still, I think, its purest […]

]]> dd8608a3f23ec9f2ef9a76272a98638e helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1085 Sun, 28 Mar 2021 15:06:31 -0400 I probably started working on this post 7or 8 years ago, as a response to Ralph Kirkpatrick’s Domenico Scarlatti, and abandoned it after becoming lost in a sea of notes on more recent scholarship. Much of the l […]

]]> 5ef4769002c27f3e4dc825e4f15ecaa4 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1071 Sun, 13 Sep 2020 17:11:01 -0400 Alex Lifeson and Grace Under Pressure

[One of the first posts I wrote for this blog (a decade ago) was a defense of Rush, prompted by the premiere of the documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage at the TriBeCa film […]

]]> 131e77689e66cb52ae1fafcecdd86dcc helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1059 Thu, 25 Jun 2020 18:33:45 -0400 After the uncollected diptychs of Herman Melville.

I. Saint Nick’s

It lay not far from the northwest entrance to the 145th Street station of the A-B-C-D trains.

A nondescript brown door, open dusk to g […]

]]> fb3fcb97ca6a96f3f1fa03673ea41ae1 helldriver commented on the post, 10 Years of the Commons: Helldriver's Pit Stop!, on the site In Common https://in.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2020/02/24/10-years-of-the-commons-helldrivers-pit-stop/#comment-1052 Fri, 06 Mar 2020 18:50:10 -0500 Just saw this. A big thanks for the shout out! I feel deeply honored! I want my cake!

One small correction: I am no longer department chair. My tenure ended in 2015. I was succeeded by the wonderful Prof. […]

]]> 7b5e91bdbb0546db5d668df631033ef2 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1046 Sun, 27 Oct 2019 16:20:51 -0400 a repurposing*
 

Keep your ticket in your pocket, that way you won’t lose it. Take it out before you get to the door so you don’t hold up the whole line. The elevators are for the elderly and handicapped, take […]

]]> c3358195bfd6cd302b6ea1df4250d52c helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1040 Sat, 03 Aug 2019 18:03:54 -0400 Here it is, the much-unanticipated and long-overdue third installment in the postmortem franchise. The main reason for the wait? My five-year break from teaching Writing About Music. While I might not have felt […]

]]> 3ac4cb5562a3ef35bc216f9fada5b640 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1024 Sat, 08 Dec 2018 00:04:07 -0500 Maybe I’m still hungover from my last posting binge, or maybe it’s just gotten to the point that my posts are so ungodly long I have to break them in two. Whatever the case, the two books I “reviewed” in my last […]

]]> 82db6021bc538a9469e181261fe6bb6e helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=1010 Sun, 11 Nov 2018 19:19:17 -0500 The first or maybe second time I read Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, I became enamored of the character of Vasudeva, the ferryman. The ferryman, as you may remember, has learned from the river how to listen. “ […]

]]> 971089c25805a85626cf10c2f1091fa6 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=992 Sat, 14 Jul 2018 12:03:34 -0400 Photo by Dana Distortion (https://www.instagram.com/danadistortion/)
It went down like this: a friend I was going to see in North Carolina happened to mention that Esperanza Spalding was playing in Asheville. I […]

]]> b3bbbbbc5cc7cafa52802590ad4ee63d helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=987 Wed, 30 May 2018 18:14:19 -0400 Some months ago, on my way home from the animal shelter where I volunteer, I was listening to Boris and Robyn, the morning DJs on my local classic rock station, WPDH. With the way I’ve paid out on classic rock r […]

]]> 6c54120ca2460ac4a03e7d909dd3d929 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=980 Mon, 19 Feb 2018 16:01:17 -0500 INTRODUCTION
Hello! Thank you for purchasing product number 99A/ToyCo, Crash Course in Auto-Drumming for the Toyota Corolla. My name is Helldriver, and I will be your instructor for this brief introduction to the […]

]]> a9095b64a3e6e8a5cc884d2009e48046 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=943 Sun, 28 Jan 2018 03:21:35 -0500 An Epic in Verse*

 

Boston.                                                                                                                                                        Foreigner, Van Halen, Stev […]

]]> 56fcdd3f2177841651eab4c86551b8b6 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=934 Thu, 11 Jan 2018 17:23:55 -0500 Consider, if you will, the heartbreaking immortality of Loverboy.
The catastrophic pathos of Loverboy.

Of being Loverboy in 2018. Of having been Loverboy for forty years.

Tennis thugs gesquozen into […]

]]> dde00152ceec0c15594cfa9377122c2e helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=924 Fri, 04 Aug 2017 20:08:30 -0400 Rather than spending the first paragraphs of this belated annual reflection flogging myself for the previous year’s scant output, wondering aloud whether this blog is still seaworthy, or is sinking under the w […]

]]> 3ff83d1ea1d17c397b9067dee9cc9a8c helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=878 Mon, 22 May 2017 04:48:22 -0400 One of the nicest things about that aspect of academic labor called sabbatical is the opportunity to re-connect with intellectual passions abandoned at the gates of the dark, Satanic mills of paper-grading that […]

]]> 3519036150e6f3bba0790193a266cf5b helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=858 Wed, 12 Apr 2017 19:14:51 -0400 Carcass’s Surgical Steel is one of the best metal records of the century.

Man, it feels good to say that. So good, in fact, that I fret I am being too conservative. Instead, I should go the whole hog, and p […]

]]> 87444c766c730a6f4cf1f49c841a5bdb helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=853 Mon, 02 Jan 2017 17:47:33 -0500 What to do when, returning from the restroom after the early set of Dave Holland’s quartet at Birdland, you find Mr. Holland himself occupying the bar stool next to yours? Sit there and fidget, of course. Allow t […]

]]> f0bae647ffc1d92cd81387e8eb26b1c4 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=847 Thu, 08 Dec 2016 16:45:46 -0500 1
“Where the future is present.”

So reads the banner hanging above the bandstand at New York’s venerable, vital Jazz Gallery. A place where talented young musicians can be mentored to carry forward the jazz […]

]]> 0d1506301d7e2d799faaadde73279822 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=841 Wed, 25 May 2016 15:30:03 -0400 Given the recent decline in production, is a year-end reflection warranted? It seems a tad self-indulgent. With so little to bite off—to riff on Shaw, about Henry James—one can become enamored by the sound of one […]

]]> 99fa0b0aeb9bc3d7ef2c3d5cdd525261 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=830 Mon, 16 May 2016 15:16:05 -0400 Some years ago, while I was trawling YouTube for vids to show my Writing About Music class, I dug up a clip from one of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts from the early ’60s. These were educational progr […]

]]> eb315370783fea64d6c27f775fb6819e helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=820 Sat, 16 Apr 2016 19:53:42 -0400 Waksman, Steve. This Ain’t the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk. Berkeley: California UP, 2011.

 

In one of my favorite Nathaniel Hawthorne sketches, “Dr. Heidegger’s Experi […]

]]> eb1a91ac4d0edf780232bbf4a041a006 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=812 Sun, 07 Feb 2016 15:57:27 -0500 The first half of “The Ramble” appeared in the journal South Loop Review in 2012. A handsome annual focusing on art and creative nonfiction produced by Columbia College Chicago, SLR was discontinued a couple of […]

]]> 19a0c198068fe0c5db62c9b37218858b helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=792 Thu, 21 Jan 2016 17:17:58 -0500 You are indeed always a day away. Is this cause for hope or despair? For Annie the eyeless orphan, hope, naturally. Corollary: the present sucks. But you’re supposed to forget this when you’re immersed in the son […]

]]> 7eb14b5ba1854fa2e25382f91c980f34 helldriver commented on the post, Three-Legged Dogs, on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop https://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2015/08/21/three-legged-dogs/comment-page-1/#comment-38057 Sat, 22 Aug 2015 17:47:53 -0400 Yeah, but the cool kids all used tp.

]]> 75ee945239a50244dc764052f3310ed6 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=783 Fri, 21 Aug 2015 16:08:30 -0400 A Partial Chronology of Butchered, Bruised, Worn, Defective, and/or Repurposed Recordings I Have Known

Analog, sigh. It was a time of cobbling, of gaps and seams, of defects as a matter of course. A combination […]

]]> b7a5d9ebb91c956883ff78d9b4b9c497 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=778 Sat, 04 Jul 2015 03:06:40 -0400 My mother is in the car. My father is at the post office, which is housed in a building indistinguishable from the businesses in the rest of this strip mall. I am at Trader Joe’s, or, as my mother called it u […]

]]> 5965e9abe42b8e34df87cf317222d290 helldriver changed their profile picture https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/activity/p/396320/ Tue, 16 Jun 2015 15:46:51 -0400 719e199fb1b8b0bd15f3d84c0cc6f065 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=770 Wed, 03 Jun 2015 17:24:10 -0400 I try to play a musical idea that is not being influenced by any previous thing I have played before […] The theme that you play at the start of the number is the territory, and what comes after, which may have v […]

]]> 746b4bb1fbf1911ef32cffca0a13cdbd helldriver commented on the post, Five Years in the Pit, on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2015/05/08/five-years-in-the-pit/comment-page-1/#comment-38042 Mon, 18 May 2015 03:03:40 -0400 I’m thrilled that you believe I can reflect my own viewpoint consistently and accurately … I wouldn’t give myself that much credit!!

I picked the Titans to do battle with, of course, a few of those whose work […]

]]> 3b0b7504b08ed9a8ec9a8aab64eeb0f6 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=762 Fri, 08 May 2015 16:56:29 -0400 Dear J.E.,

I’ve been thinking a lot about a comment you made in an email a few months ago. Right before signing off, and after some typically ear-opening remarks about music, you wrote (ahem): “Am I blo […]

]]> 454831b2920d161d8b5e1078eeeade1f helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=753 Sun, 19 Apr 2015 17:20:11 -0400 Voila! The mysterious reproductive habits of the to-go cup, at last caught on film.

Payphones form part of that reef of obsolescence that defines the modern city. The cups, deposited as planulae, […]

]]> 519d742a15b9e1dc6a68e3050d1fd2e1 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=731 Fri, 20 Mar 2015 17:34:42 -0400 As we hightail it out of the coldest February since the Hudson Valley started keeping records in ’49, and I stare out my window at a landscape still knee-deep in snow, it may be a good time to look back on those p […]

]]> b8ec65559ffc261bb4421f83b7e58847 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=714 Wed, 04 Feb 2015 05:11:46 -0500 Thumbnail

 

Hermes, Will. Love Goes to Buildings on Fire. New York: Faber & Faber, 2011.

 

 

Man, am I sick of Brooklyn.

Remember that New Yorker cover from 1976 where Jersey is a brown smear and the West […]

]]> b17a9658e69795286c3486598e7fe932 helldriver changed their profile picture https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/activity/p/322489/ Sun, 25 Jan 2015 16:12:58 -0500 15ccf86272a24dde03d74ed0eeb2ae89 helldriver's profile was updated https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/activity/p/322488/ Sun, 25 Jan 2015 16:11:05 -0500 67884ed784a19bad45b03fe33dfbdac1 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=698 Sun, 18 Jan 2015 02:43:54 -0500 ThumbnailI live near the Appalachian Trail, and on days I don’t work, I walk the dog there, follow the white blazes a mile or two toward either Ktaadn or Georgia and back again (or, starting north, make a triangle with […]

]]> 917efbc19855e12c0df3463a789de30b helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=618 Mon, 18 Aug 2014 02:54:37 -0400 ThumbnailIt is the late ‘90s, and I am at Don Hill’s, watching a band I wouldn’t normally go out to hear, except that two of the members are friends of my girlfriend. A mixed-gender power trio, good musicians, good people. […]

]]> a42d39bc17d10cba7720ac2ae3f6fefd helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=610 Sat, 02 Aug 2014 14:52:49 -0400 Here are a couple of payphones on Madison Avenue, somewhere in the upper thirties. Note the residue of the scrubbed-off graffiti tags on their scuffed foreheads, and the paint streaks, maybe from when the phones […]

]]> 7872b23357336663435043b50eba2964 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=597 Sun, 06 Jul 2014 14:23:49 -0400 Thumbnail 

Dear Goatwhore,

I love you.

I’ve loved you since I first clapped eyes and ears on you more than a year ago, at St. Vitus. Remember? Of course you do. You followed Three Inches of Blood. I was at the […]

]]> 4878cb5dd257ecb0c5ccc1254419e1e2 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=594 Mon, 23 Jun 2014 16:17:27 -0400 Look at these beauts. Their fine metal livery polished, a bevy of butlers awaiting your handful of change to connect you with anywhere in the world for four solid minutes.

The nuclear family: junior on the far […]

]]> ef69450da69d0be689c69435c17bb700 helldriver wrote a new post on the site Helldriver's Pit Stop http://helldriver.commons.gc.cuny.edu/?p=586 Sat, 07 Jun 2014 16:03:18 -0400 ThumbnailIf someone were to ask me, “Helldriver, what is the most maudlin sound in the world?” the Conan sitting Indian-style in my brain would answer, in the thick Austro-Bavarian accent of a future governor of […]

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