When purity was called virginity, and Juliana Hatfield was its poster girl

The mini-uproar that host Russell Brand generated at the MTV Video Music Awards by ribbing the Jonas Brothers about their "purity rings" has passed. The Jo Bros and their defender Jordin Sparks can go back to "Burnin' Up" while taking love"One Step at a Time" (as their respective singles describe), and Brand can sit back and enjoy the new season of "Californication." I tried to clear my mind the other morning by cracking open a good new book -- only to be reminded that sexual conservatism and pop have been strange bedfellows before, and not so long ago.

Juliana Hatfield, the author of the new memoir "When I Grow Up," was an indie rock star back when that music defined a slacker generation. She palled around with scene hottie Evan Dando (remember the Lemonheads?), wrote great songs about loving Nirvana and going to see the Violent Femmes and, with the band the Blake Babies and her ongoing solo career, helped misfit, thinking girls carve out their own corner of guitar heaven.

Hatfield is gifted with Top Model looks as well as a stunning sense of melody and the chops to play a mean guitar solo when required. Coming up alongside fiercely confrontational artists including Courtney Love and Kathleen Hanna, she got a reputation as something of a prom queen. She was just too pretty, too aloof; and she had a habit of getting miffed with interviewers and saying things that sounded downright conservative....

No other female R&B singer can claim to have a life as intertwined with hip-hop's great successes or its tragedies as Faith Evans. Caught in the middle of the so-called East Coast versus West Coast "war" of the mid-'90s — most embodied by the rivalry between her late-husband, Notorious B.I.G., and Tupac Shakur, who taunted B.I.G. in song about an alleged affair with the singer — she's gone on to carve out a successful platinum-selling career in her own right.

And now she's co-written a tell-all. Released late last month, "Keep the Faith: A Memoir," tells her story of going from church gospel choirs (not too far from the same New Jersey environs that raised mega-divas Whitney Houston and Queen Latifah) to working for Bad Boy impresario Diddy to her troubled marriage to B.I.G.

A crowd of more than 50 people awaited her entrance in the book signing area at the Grove's Barnes & Noble store Wednesday night. After nearly an hour wait, due to an on-camera interview in a separate location, Evans gave a few brief remarks and took questions from the audience.

In music criticism, depending on who you ask and if that person's editor is listening, lists are either the bane of a critic’s existence, or an exalted platform for organizing one’s thoughts. With “1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: A Listener’s Life List,” Tom Moon, NPR's "All Things Considered" contributor and former music critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, has gone with the latter, thereby putting the desert island concept to shame. After all, we’re all gonna die, but a little sand never hurt an iPod. His picks cover vast ground -– Bad Brains, Count Basie, Baby Huey, J.S. Bach and Waldemar Bastos, for starters. Making it through all of Moon's 1,000 picks sounds like the perfect OCD-baiting project for the fall. I'll throw a party if I make it to 500.

-- Margaret Wappler

Tom Moon presents and signs his book at 7 p.m. Saturday at Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. (310) 659-3110.

Brad Meltzer’s hot thriller "The Book of Lies" is being published on Tuesday with a unique companion soundtrack.  Because a key element in the book is Meltzer’s theory about the origins of Superman, the music on the CD includes several pop songs that have referenced the Man of Steel, including R.E.M.’s “Superman,” Five for Fighting’s “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” and Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero.”

Kal-el and his earthly alter-ego, Clark Kent, have been popular topics for pop, rock, R&B, blues and hip-hop artists, and just as cinematic treatments of Superdude have evolved over time, so have the musical invocations.

In the '60s, Donovan found extraordinary strength in flower-power, R&B-funk musician Johnny "Guitar" Watson took the idea straight into the bedroom in the '70s, while emo rockers such as Five for Fighting whimper about how hard it is to live up to super ideals.

“The Book of Lies” CD just scratches the surface--and it includes Joey Scarbury’s milquetoast Theme from “Greatest American Hero (Believe It or Not).” Superman fans deserve better, so we’ve assembled a highly subjective and opinionated list of the best pop songs more worthy of a super hearing. Check them out on the Hero Complex blog.

-- Randy Lewis

*(Update: An earlier version of this post misidentified Brad Meltzer’s book as "Body of Lies.")

A quick stroll through the contributors' list for Da Capo's forthcoming "Best Music Writing 2008" anthology yields many of the usual suspects (including, unfortunately but inevitably, Gene Weingarten's High Culture barricade-enforcing piece on Joshua Bell playing for change in the D.C. Metro). But a surprising small-run magazine popped up a few times with very worthy entries, the Middle Eastern and South Asian cultural journal Bidoun.

The magazine, like its contemporary peers n+1 and Russia!, is a roundabout survey of long-form political reporting, interviews and essays on cultural ephemera, but its thoughtful dissections of Orientalism in the avant-garde and pop music worlds are often revelatory.

   

Faith Evans, East Coast versus West Coast veteran, speaks about her tell-all memoir

No other female R&B singer can claim to have a life as intertwined with hip-hop's great successes or its tragedies as Faith Evans. Caught in the middle of the so-called East Coast versus West Coast "war" of the mid-'90s — most embodied by the rivalry between her late-husband, Notorious B.I.G., and Tupac Shakur, who taunted B.I.G. in song about an alleged affair with the singer — she's gone on to carve out a successful platinum-selling career in her own right.

And now she's co-written a tell-all. Released late last month, "Keep the Faith: A Memoir," tells her story of going from church gospel choirs (not too far from the same New Jersey environs that raised mega-divas Whitney Houston and Queen Latifah) to working for Bad Boy impresario Diddy to her troubled marriage to B.I.G.

A crowd of more than 50 people awaited her entrance in the book signing area at the Grove's Barnes & Noble store Wednesday night. After nearly an hour wait, due to an on-camera interview in a separate location, Evans gave a few brief remarks and took questions from the audience.

In music criticism, depending on who you ask and if that person's editor is listening, lists are either the bane of a critic’s existence, or an exalted platform for organizing one’s thoughts. With “1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: A Listener’s Life List,” Tom Moon, NPR's "All Things Considered" contributor and former music critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, has gone with the latter, thereby putting the desert island concept to shame. After all, we’re all gonna die, but a little sand never hurt an iPod. His picks cover vast ground -– Bad Brains, Count Basie, Baby Huey, J.S. Bach and Waldemar Bastos, for starters. Making it through all of Moon's 1,000 picks sounds like the perfect OCD-baiting project for the fall. I'll throw a party if I make it to 500.

-- Margaret Wappler

Tom Moon presents and signs his book at 7 p.m. Saturday at Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. (310) 659-3110.

Brad Meltzer’s hot thriller "The Book of Lies" is being published on Tuesday with a unique companion soundtrack.  Because a key element in the book is Meltzer’s theory about the origins of Superman, the music on the CD includes several pop songs that have referenced the Man of Steel, including R.E.M.’s “Superman,” Five for Fighting’s “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” and Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero.”

Kal-el and his earthly alter-ego, Clark Kent, have been popular topics for pop, rock, R&B, blues and hip-hop artists, and just as cinematic treatments of Superdude have evolved over time, so have the musical invocations.

In the '60s, Donovan found extraordinary strength in flower-power, R&B-funk musician Johnny "Guitar" Watson took the idea straight into the bedroom in the '70s, while emo rockers such as Five for Fighting whimper about how hard it is to live up to super ideals.

“The Book of Lies” CD just scratches the surface--and it includes Joey Scarbury’s milquetoast Theme from “Greatest American Hero (Believe It or Not).” Superman fans deserve better, so we’ve assembled a highly subjective and opinionated list of the best pop songs more worthy of a super hearing. Check them out on the Hero Complex blog.

-- Randy Lewis

*(Update: An earlier version of this post misidentified Brad Meltzer’s book as "Body of Lies.")

A quick stroll through the contributors' list for Da Capo's forthcoming "Best Music Writing 2008" anthology yields many of the usual suspects (including, unfortunately but inevitably, Gene Weingarten's High Culture barricade-enforcing piece on Joshua Bell playing for change in the D.C. Metro). But a surprising small-run magazine popped up a few times with very worthy entries, the Middle Eastern and South Asian cultural journal Bidoun.

The magazine, like its contemporary peers n+1 and Russia!, is a roundabout survey of long-form political reporting, interviews and essays on cultural ephemera, but its thoughtful dissections of Orientalism in the avant-garde and pop music worlds are often revelatory.

   

'1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die' taunts the completists

In music criticism, depending on who you ask and if that person's editor is listening, lists are either the bane of a critic’s existence, or an exalted platform for organizing one’s thoughts. With “1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: A Listener’s Life List,” Tom Moon, NPR's "All Things Considered" contributor and former music critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, has gone with the latter, thereby putting the desert island concept to shame. After all, we’re all gonna die, but a little sand never hurt an iPod. His picks cover vast ground -– Bad Brains, Count Basie, Baby Huey, J.S. Bach and Waldemar Bastos, for starters. Making it through all of Moon's 1,000 picks sounds like the perfect OCD-baiting project for the fall. I'll throw a party if I make it to 500.

-- Margaret Wappler

Tom Moon presents and signs his book at 7 p.m. Saturday at Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. (310) 659-3110.

Brad Meltzer’s hot thriller "The Book of Lies" is being published on Tuesday with a unique companion soundtrack.  Because a key element in the book is Meltzer’s theory about the origins of Superman, the music on the CD includes several pop songs that have referenced the Man of Steel, including R.E.M.’s “Superman,” Five for Fighting’s “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” and Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero.”

Kal-el and his earthly alter-ego, Clark Kent, have been popular topics for pop, rock, R&B, blues and hip-hop artists, and just as cinematic treatments of Superdude have evolved over time, so have the musical invocations.

In the '60s, Donovan found extraordinary strength in flower-power, R&B-funk musician Johnny "Guitar" Watson took the idea straight into the bedroom in the '70s, while emo rockers such as Five for Fighting whimper about how hard it is to live up to super ideals.

“The Book of Lies” CD just scratches the surface--and it includes Joey Scarbury’s milquetoast Theme from “Greatest American Hero (Believe It or Not).” Superman fans deserve better, so we’ve assembled a highly subjective and opinionated list of the best pop songs more worthy of a super hearing. Check them out on the Hero Complex blog.

-- Randy Lewis

*(Update: An earlier version of this post misidentified Brad Meltzer’s book as "Body of Lies.")

A quick stroll through the contributors' list for Da Capo's forthcoming "Best Music Writing 2008" anthology yields many of the usual suspects (including, unfortunately but inevitably, Gene Weingarten's High Culture barricade-enforcing piece on Joshua Bell playing for change in the D.C. Metro). But a surprising small-run magazine popped up a few times with very worthy entries, the Middle Eastern and South Asian cultural journal Bidoun.

The magazine, like its contemporary peers n+1 and Russia!, is a roundabout survey of long-form political reporting, interviews and essays on cultural ephemera, but its thoughtful dissections of Orientalism in the avant-garde and pop music worlds are often revelatory.

   

Superman-inspired pop songs celebrated in new package*

Brad Meltzer’s hot thriller "The Book of Lies" is being published on Tuesday with a unique companion soundtrack.  Because a key element in the book is Meltzer’s theory about the origins of Superman, the music on the CD includes several pop songs that have referenced the Man of Steel, including R.E.M.’s “Superman,” Five for Fighting’s “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” and Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero.”

Kal-el and his earthly alter-ego, Clark Kent, have been popular topics for pop, rock, R&B, blues and hip-hop artists, and just as cinematic treatments of Superdude have evolved over time, so have the musical invocations.

In the '60s, Donovan found extraordinary strength in flower-power, R&B-funk musician Johnny "Guitar" Watson took the idea straight into the bedroom in the '70s, while emo rockers such as Five for Fighting whimper about how hard it is to live up to super ideals.

“The Book of Lies” CD just scratches the surface--and it includes Joey Scarbury’s milquetoast Theme from “Greatest American Hero (Believe It or Not).” Superman fans deserve better, so we’ve assembled a highly subjective and opinionated list of the best pop songs more worthy of a super hearing. Check them out on the Hero Complex blog.

-- Randy Lewis

*(Update: An earlier version of this post misidentified Brad Meltzer’s book as "Body of Lies.")

A quick stroll through the contributors' list for Da Capo's forthcoming "Best Music Writing 2008" anthology yields many of the usual suspects (including, unfortunately but inevitably, Gene Weingarten's High Culture barricade-enforcing piece on Joshua Bell playing for change in the D.C. Metro). But a surprising small-run magazine popped up a few times with very worthy entries, the Middle Eastern and South Asian cultural journal Bidoun.

The magazine, like its contemporary peers n+1 and Russia!, is a roundabout survey of long-form political reporting, interviews and essays on cultural ephemera, but its thoughtful dissections of Orientalism in the avant-garde and pop music worlds are often revelatory.

   

Bidoun becomes an unlikely home for great contemporary music writing

A quick stroll through the contributors' list for Da Capo's forthcoming "Best Music Writing 2008" anthology yields many of the usual suspects (including, unfortunately but inevitably, Gene Weingarten's High Culture barricade-enforcing piece on Joshua Bell playing for change in the D.C. Metro). But a surprising small-run magazine popped up a few times with very worthy entries, the Middle Eastern and South Asian cultural journal Bidoun.

The magazine, like its contemporary peers n+1 and Russia!, is a roundabout survey of long-form political reporting, interviews and essays on cultural ephemera, but its thoughtful dissections of Orientalism in the avant-garde and pop music worlds are often revelatory.