The Baffler No. 5

3.8/5 ( ratings)

Baffling the consensus since 1988, this journal seeks to debunk the ideology of the free market and to drive public discourse in literate and humane directions. Issues contain thundering anti-business salvos from the sharpest minds, as well as poetry, literature, and satirical art.

This fifth issue, "Alternative to What?", takes a stab at the music industry, with writings by Tom Frank and Steve Albini, plus Janice Eidus, Rick Perlstein, and Robert Nedelkoff.

Contents:

Alternative to What?
Tom Frank

Burn Down The House of Commons in Your Brand New Shoes
Keith White

Business Punks Rule
Seth Sanders

Semiotics Mailbag
Hypatia Sanders

Eulogy: Sun Ra
Bob Nastanovich

Brain Dead in Seattle: A Jeremiad
Eric Iversen

The Problem With Music
Steve Albini

Aeroflot '93: Dispatch from Moscow
Nathan Frank

Let's Talk Rock
Seth Sanders

A Nest of Ninies: Selections
Seth Sanders

Sweet Portable You: Selections

The Name-Caller
Steve Healey

The Teen Rebel as Model Consumer: The Hip World of Sassy
T. C. Frank

Life as Style: Putting the “World” in the Music
Herbert Mattelart

We're Marketed, Therefore We Are?
Stephen Duncombe

Back in Black on the Beaten Path
Maura Mahoney

The Nostalgia Gap
Tom Vanderbilt

Fiction

Not the Plaster Casters
Janis Eidus

The District Supervisor
Robert W. Nedelkoff

The Grace of God
Mat Lebowitz

Outside My Window: A Gray Day in Ann Arbor
Rick Perlstein

I Am the Light
Daniel S. Libman

Gedney Goes Underground
D. M. Mulcahey and T. C. Frank

Poetry

Gaston de Béarn: Ballad
David Berman: Democratic Vistas
Alec Dinwoodie: With This Poem All Things Are Possible, Interior, What she does not understand
Joe Fodor: Bonny Boy, Song of Her Vomit
James Tolan: Nocturne