FOREWORD: I was lucky enough to be liked by CBGB head honcho, Hilly Kristal. I doubt he’d remember my name if he were still alive. But he knew my face.
When Kristal opened CB’s 313 Gallery next door around ‘92, he hosted Smug Magazine’s 1st anniversary party, where I met and got stoned with Steve Bloom, editor of High Times – which led to a 20-years-plus writing gig at the glorious pro-marijuana publication. Months afterwards, Kristal cleaned out CBGB’s cement-floored …
“A libationary ode and discourse on the vagaries and complexities of beer and ale sampling, fraught with wit, perspicacity, and genuine appreciation for the subject.”
-Bruce Nantz R.I.P.
This humble guide attempts to compare and contrast a great sampling of microbrewed and macrobrewed beers and ales on the market, offering easy to read reviews and handy observations of a fine cross-section of more than 19,500 brews consumed and rated since 1997.
-John Fortunato
Ever since Samuel Adams, Sierra Nevada …
Talk about meeting one of your favorite artists and then getting to hang with him before and after a sweat-drenched sold out gig. That’s what happened in 2003 when I visited Chicago to do a brewpub tour and catch Peter Shelley’s lifelong punk-pop outfit, the Buzzcocks, across the street from historic Wrigley Field. One of the friendliest and least conceded artists I’ve encountered, Shelley had just signed with indie icon, Merge Records, and released an enjoyable eponymous Buzzcocks disc he …
FOREWORD: Eels brainchild Mark Everett has suffered for his art too long, enduring family and friends’ tragic deaths while absorbing sundry other calamities I’d wish only on Bin Laden and Hitler. His ’96 debut, Beautiful Freak, and its whimsical narcotic spellbinder, “Novocaine For The Soul,” really broke through on modern rock and college radio in part due to Beck’s ‘chilaxed’ downcast suburban ditty, “Loser.”
