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CHRIS FARAONE
A new addition to the Phoenix staff, I grew up in Queens. I attended Hobart College in upstate New York, until I eventually graduated and moved to South Florida where I worked as a dorm-to-dorm vacation cruise salesmen and moonlighted as a stand-up comic. To sharpen my writing and further delay life, I enrolled at New School University’s Graduate Faculty, where I was the biggest dope in the program. No regrets though; it was there that I daydreamed up the counter-intellectual philosophy – which I dubbed roastmodernism© . Following some foreplay on New York’s then-burgeoning on-line literary scene, I enrolled at Boston University’s College of Communication in 2004 and I’ve been here in Boston ever since. I’ve had been published by the Boston Herald, Boston’s Weekly Dig, and Boston Magazine, Elemental, Spin, and Columbia Journalism Review, and still regularly write for The Source, Antenna, and Yellow Rat Bastard (YRB).
Latest Articles
Many's Rivers to Cross Dept.
If every last allegation that Church of Scientology (CoS) defector Nancy Many charges in My Billion Year Contract is true, then her book should inspire several FBI raids and a Lifetime mini-series to rival any Charles Manson documentary.
Public School Records (2010)
Coolzey is not the next big thing. Or even the next medium thing.
Somebody pinch People Under the Stairs
Nine out of 10 rap legends prefer People Under the Stairs. (The holdout is a crackhead.) That's no joke — in my hundreds of interviews with dudes who brought the noise and funk before the big ship sunk ( circa 1997), California underground heroes Thes One and Double K have been as popular a subject as the exploitation of old-school luminaries.
Cracking Harvard's 'psychedelic club'
"This is like the founding myth of the '60s counterculture, even though there was a lot of truth to it."
Boston's most rebellious continuing-ed courses
With some exceptions, college is a nightclub with a $30,000 annual cover charge. Tests and term papers occasionally crash the party, but for the most part undergraduate matriculation is an excuse to engage in outlandish hedonism.
At-large City Councilor John Connolly sets his sights on creating multi-million-dollar environmental academy.
Little girls and boys frolic on swing sets whittled from recycled beech wood.
Urban Home Companion (2010)
No regional hip-hop scene has a more distinct sound than the Twin Cities.
Borrow his book
"The opposite of consumption is not thrift but generosity; if you look at happiness studies, we are happiest when we give things away rather than when we accumulate or when we don't spend."
Can hip-hop deliver in 2010?
With a semi-sober face I'll claim that hip-hop in 2010 might deliver more than just posthumous Dilla discs, Dipset mixtapes, and a new ignoramus coke rapper whom critics pretend rhymes in triple-entendres.
H-2 Woes Dept.
The freedom to vacation before wrapping up vital work is just one perk of holding statewide office.
Beacon Hill is green-lighting elbow smashes to the face, as Mass. officially welcomes mixed martial arts
This past Saturday, Dover-raised gladiator Kenny Florian beat the pretty out of long-haired Chicago carpenter-turned-ass kicker Clay Guida.
Richard Lewis can't stop himself
"My dream [today] was bad. It was like a Jewish, Fellini-esque dragons-with-skulls-and-ex-girlfriends."
Boston and Broadway
Riddle this: what's more unlikely than the fact that the current toast of Broadway is a musical about a Nigerian agitprop pop singer, or that it owes its existence to a Caucasian commodities trader from New England?
Masspike Miles, Lisa Bello, and the little R&B scene that can
There’s no underground scene for pop-minded R&B. Not in Boston, and not really anyplace else.
The Lizard is broken indeed
Here's how the shit version of Waiting likely came to be: the Broken Lizard boys (David Heffernan directs) thought the concept of a boxing-champ-turned-Miami-restaurateur was funny, and they wrote and shot a major motion picture without bothering to design a plot.
With big record companies willingly bucking technology, musicians and software types gathered in Cambridge to revolutionize the industry.
On an unheralded fall weekend right before Thanksgiving, a roomful of amateur hackers and Web rock stars gathered in East Cambridge for a historic convention that could dramatically reshape the way we get our music.
From the curb to the club with Singapore Kane
Ask any group of teens on Blue Hill Ave how many of them rap and you'll get more affirmatives than you would surveying kids at Mass and Boylston for slap-bass skills. Allston might be a crab bucket of indie-rockers, and one in three JP residents is an abstract painter, but MCs in Boston's black communities have more competition than nail salons in Dudley Square.
One (2009)
Since Boy Meets World dropped into my radar a month ago, I’ve discovered how much magic stretches clean across the tracklist, and I was planning to include it on my year-end list. Yet more immediate praise is due.
Why do some people get to watch movies for a living?
Like Trekkies and other documentaries that examine what makes particular nerd legions tick, For the Love of Movies beams viewers to a planet that outsiders only think they know about.
Power Play Dept.
Folks driving past suburban Stop & Shop locations this week might wonder why laborers are suddenly concerned about food safety.
