Patrick Haggerty, who led the pioneering queer country group Lavender Country, has died. The news was announced on the band’s official social media pages. “After suffering a stroke several weeks ago, he was able to spend his final days at home surrounded by his kids and lifelong husband, JB. Love, and solidarity,” the statement reads. Haggerty was 78.
Born on September 27, 1944, Haggerty was raised on a dairy farm in a small rural community near Port Angeles, Washington. He joined the Peace Corps after high school, but in 1966 was discharged for being gay. In 1970, Haggerty moved to Seattle to attend a graduate program at the University of Washington and soon began writing folk and country songs, having taught himself how to play the guitar an early age. He started Lavender Country, which is considered the first openly gay country band, in 1972. Their self-titled debut, which included the songs ‘Cryin’ These Cocksucking Tears’ and ‘Come Out Singing’, arrived the following year.
In an interview with Pitchfork earlier this year, Haggerty reflected on the supportive community he grew up with and the influence it had on his music, particularly the encouragement he received from his father. “My dad said I could wear a ballerina outfit at 4-H camp and make blonde wigs out of twine to play like I had long hair with my sisters – being really brazen and sissy in the 1950s in a very rural setting, all because my dad said I could,” Haggerty said. “I like to say the reason that I made Lavender Country when I made it was because my dad said I could.”
Lavender Country broke up in 1976, but Haggerty continued his work as an activist and played in several Seattle bands over the years. Lavender Country reunited in 2000 after being the focus of a Journal of Country Music article on gay country artists, releasing the Lavender Country Revisited EP featuring two new songs. In 2014, their debut album was reissued by Paradise of Bachelors, whose co-founder Brendan Greaves wrote in a tribute: “He was more than a hero; he was also a friend, mentor, comrade, and fatherly figure for us and our families. He was hilarious too; it was always an adventure spending time with him.”
In 2019, the band released their first new album in almost 50 years, Blackberry Rose and Other Songs and Sorrows, which got reissued by Don Giovanni Records earlier this year. “Patrick Haggerty was one of the funniest, kindest, bravest, and smartest people I ever met,” the label said in a statement. “He never gave up fighting for what he believed in, and those around him who he loved and took care of will continue that fight.”
Mabe Fratti has unveiled a new music video for ‘Con Esfuerzo’, the opening track from her latest album Se Ve Desde Aquí. The clip was filmed, directed, and edited by José Ostos. Watch it below, where you can also find the Guatemalan cellist’s newly announced European tour dates.
“In this video I wanted to achieve a very specific relationship between music and images,” Ostos explained in a press release. “For me, the visual universe was suggested from the beginning of the song; the metallic sound of Mabe’s cello immediately made me think of old train tracks. I took footage from my personal archive where movement played a central role, images that I have recorded in the last few years: trains, city streets, public squares. A bit in the spirit of the film diaries of Nathaniel Dorsky or Jonas Mekas, I wanted to assemble these images to create an impressionistic urban landscape where the frame, the colors and the camera movement worked as extensions of the voices of the instruments in ‘Con Esfuerzo.’”
Backxwash has released a new album, His Happiness Shall Come First Even Though We Are Suffering, to celebrate Halloween. It’s described as the final album in a trilogy that began with 2020’s God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It and continued with last year’s I Lie Here Buried With My Rings And My Dresses. The new LP features guest contributions from Vaelastrasz, Morgan-Paige, Michael Go, PUPIL SLICER, Censored Dialogue, Sadistik, and Ghais Guevara. Its cover art was created by Chachi Revah, who also handled the artwork for the last two albums. Stream it below.
In a statement accompanying the new album, Backxwash wrote:
I thank you all for coming on this journey with me. I have grown a lot from a musical and just mental perspective over my time producing these albums. At this time, I would like to take a break and just soak everything that has happened in. I realized I have not gotten an opportunity to do that and If I keep going on at this pace it will be a detriment to my mental stability. These songs take me to a very dark place and writing about these topics at times is not an easy task. I thank everyone for having the patience of listening to these thoughts over the years. I would like to thank all of you for coming with me on this journey.
The HIRS Collective have announced a new album, We’re Still Here. It lands on March 24 via Get Better and boasts guest appearances from My Chemical Romance’s Frank Iero, Pierce Jordan of Soul Glo, Thursday’s Geoff Rickley, Fucked Up’s Damon Abraham, Marissa Paternoster of Screaming Females, Justin Pearson of the Locust and Planet B, the Body’s Chip King, and more. Listen to the title track, featuring Shirley Manson of Garbage, below, and check out the album cover artwork and tracklist further down.
“We’ll never quit this collective, a version of therapy for ourselves and anyone who feels in need to scream their lungs out for one more day of living,” the Hirs Collective said in a statement. “We don’t think we can destroy every single negative structure, but we can dismantle them within ourselves. And if we have the chance to destroy it, let’s fucking go. But we aren’t going to be given any power from anyone else and have to take it for ourselves.”
We’re Still Here Tracklist:
We’re Still Here Tracklist:
1. We’re Still Here [feat. Shirley Manson and AC Sapphire]
2. Sweet Like Candy [feat. No Man, Thou and Jessica Joy Mills]
3. Burn Your House Down [feat. Jessica G.Z. and Gouge Away]
4. N.O. S.I.R. [feat. Justin Pearson and Nevada Nieves]
5. Waste Not Want Not [feat. Soul Glo and Escuela Grind]
6. Public Service Announcement [feat. Dan Yemin and Dark Thoughts]
7. Judgement Night [feat. Ghösh and Jessica Joy Mills]
8. Trust the Process [feat. Frank Iero, My Chemical Romance and Rosie Richeson]
9. XOXOXOXOXOX [feat. Melt Banana]
10. You Are Not Alone [feat. Lora Mathis and The Body]
11. Apoptosis and Proliferation [feat. Nate Newton and Full of Hell]
12. So, Anyway… [feat. Geoff Rickley and Kayla Phillips]
13. A Different Kind of Bed Death [feat. Anthony Green and Pain Chain]
14. Neila Forever [feat. Jeremy Bolm and Jordan Dreyeri]
15. Last King Meets Last Priest [feat. Chris #2 and Derek Zanetti]
16. Unicorn Tapestry Woven in Fire [feat. Marissa Paternoster, Damian Abraham and Pinkwash]
17. Bringing Light and Replenishments [feat. The Punk Cellist and Sunrot]
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds have released a new song, ‘Pretty Boy’, which features Johnny Marr on guitar. The track, co-produced with Paul “Strangeboy” Stacey, is taken from a forthcoming album that’s due out next year. Check out a video for it below.
“For this new record it was the first thing I wrote, the first thing I demoed and the first thing I finished, so it’s only right that it’s the first thing people get to hear,” Gallagher said in a statement. “Massive shout out to my mainest man Johnny Marr for taking it somewhere special. Oh… and watch out for a cameo from me in the video… first one to spot me wins a bag of Flamin’ Hot Wotsits Giants!!”
At the present moment of the development of civilization, we are surrounded by a huge number of elements, inventions, various products and materials discovered earlier by our remote ancestors. We use most of them daily, some less often. However, many of us do not even comprehend how much magic can actually be invested in them. Various symbols can serve as an essential and illustrative example of this fact. So, the number of magical tokens is sometimes amazing, because, for example, each Celtic symbol carries its own mystery and striking meaning.
Nowadays, you can find several hundred different signs that somehow relate to different nationalities and centuries. Some of them are found in amulets and averters to this day and carry positive energy, while others carry such meaning that it is better to avoid. They can be used in satanic rituals or rites of black magic and wizardry.
For a long time, people have invested a certain sacred meaning in the first images, figures and signs that appeared at the dawn of human civilization as a whole. Thousands of years ago, the very first ancient symbols were created, which were worthily considered the significant elements of culture.
Of course, some of these symbols have changed significantly, nevertheless, their meanings are known to many. However, some pictures and signs have been preserved in their original form, the only drawback in this case is that their exact origin is still unknown and undisclosed. There are even opinions that the symbols were not invented by man himself, but created directly by nature itself, and the embodiment and acquisition of a graphic sign was given to them by the human hand.
In fact, a symbol is a conditional sign or action that shows a certain phenomenon, concept or idea. The main function and purpose of the these all is to reflect the main aspects of physical and social reality. For example, in ancient times, stones were marked with various figures and signs, because they were considered the abodes of spirits and deities. In other words, these figures and notes were intended for the gods.
There is undoubtedly another side to this phenomenon. The man intended to preserve and pass on his experience to the next generations. As an easy and accessible tool of cognition, it was possible to use symbols. The ability to detect and recreate a symbol is a rather unique feature of human thinking, therefore, in this way, depicting symbols, a person revealed important and necessary moments of reality that could not be revealed by other methods.
It can be noted that the figures seemed to appear as a result of human mental activity, and the psyche is an immediate and integral part of human nature.
Symbols are always ambiguous, no matter how much magic they contain. The fact is that our nature and the world are dual and ambiguous, therefore, a symbol can also denote a real-life object, phenomenon or abstract concept. In many cases, a real object can be endowed with a special sacred meaning and thereby become an object of worship endowed with immense magical power. It is often attributed to a unique magical meaning, as a result of which the sign becomes something mystical, mysterious and inexplicable. Giving examples, even Greek letters have their own unique sense and concept.
By the way, the ancient Greeks had several myths about the origin of their alphabet. The letters embedded in the alphabet were not created by one person. They were introduced by different people, guided by their goals and opinions and making their own special meaning. So, there are legends that the first seven letters of the Greek alphabet were sent by Rock himself. Pythagoras believed the one who gave names to everything should be revered not only as the smartest, but also as the oldest of the sages.
Obviously, ancient history is carefully covered with various of shells, and it is unlikely that today’s humanity will ever have the opportunity to reveal these secrets and mysteries. In some sources, the invention of letters is associated with the process of observing flying cranes. The ancient Greeks were struck by the idea and carried away by the idea that such forms could be adapted to convey sounds in writing. The most truthful assumption about the creation of the ancient Greek alphabet is the fact the basis and model for Greek letters was the Phoenician alphabet created a little earlier. After all, many of the outlines of the elements of the alphabet are initially close and similar in shape to the very first alphabet. Undoubtedly, the standard form of writing system was not adopted immediately, but only with time and experience. The form that has been preserved to this day was even then more convenient for everyone and viable. For example, bulky, difficult-to-spell letters were discarded.
By that time, literacy among the male part of the population was mandatory. Writing and literacy were in demand in many spheres. For example, these were trade items, legal documents, religious services and, undoubtedly, literary works. By the way, these are the types of activities that we still associate with literacy and a sufficient level of education.
Unlike the Latin alphabet, Greek letters also represent numbers. This feature provides humanity with significant opportunities to use the Greek alphabet for magical purposes. It should be added the Greek alphabet is a magical system with a number of esoteric correspondences that give it a powerful potential for divination, fortune-telling, occult and prophecy. With this function, the Greek alphabet is similar to the use of runes. Like runes, each Greek letter has its own special name, semantic meaning and numerical expression, and all this can be used for predictions.
In the Greek tradition, both pagan and Christian rites, these numbers hide aspects of the holy scriptures. Thus, symbols are useful not only in transmitting experience to generations, in scientific application, but also play an essential role in rituals, carry divine actions and something mysterious and mythical.
fanclubwallet has shared a new single for Halloween, ‘Roadkill’, alongside an accompanying video. It marks Hannah Judge’s first new music since May’s You Have Got to Be Kidding Me. Check out the self-directed visual below.
“‘Roadkill’ is basically about the way men put female musicians or just women in general up on strange pedestals,” Judge explained in a press release. “Idolizing and viewing them as an object or prize to be won.”
“It’s a simple video reflecting my love of horror movies while utilizing my experience with practical visual effects and horror makeup,” she added of the video. “When I was younger I would fake sick and stay home from school. I would watch horror makeup tutorials and my mom would always come home to me with some wacky horror makeup on. The video’s series of slow zoom-out shots that reveal that I’ve been wounded reflect the lyrical theme on ‘Roadkill’ and feeling hunted.”
Throughout the week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with the new releases that caught our attention the most, be it a single leading up to the release of an album or a newly unveiled deep cut. And each Monday, we round up the best new songs released over the past week (the eligibility period begins on Monday and ends Sunday night) in this best new music segment.
On this week’s list, we have Andrew Bird’s new single, a stirring reinterpretation of Emily Dickinson’s ‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain’ featuring Phoebe Bridgers; ‘Limousine’, the striking lead single from Maria Jacobson’s second album as Fran, adorned by strings from Macie Stewart and Whitney Johnson; Anxious’ bright, catchy new song ‘Where You Been’; White Reaper’s punchy and melodic ‘Pages’; and Sofia Jenser’s tenderly intimate new Free Range track, ‘All My Thoughts’.
Tayalor Swift has achieved her 11th consecutive No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, with Midnights becoming the biggest-selling album in almost seven years. The album, released on October 21 with four different CD and vinyl editions, earned 1.578 million equivalent album units in the US in the week ending October 27.
According to Billboard, it’s the largest debut for an album since 2015, when Adele scored 3.482 million units with 25 in 2015. It’s also the biggest sales week for an album since Swift’s reputation, which moved 1.216 million units in 2017. Swift has also now tied Barbra Streisand as the woman with the most No. 1 albums and is the sixth act with more than 10 No. 1 albums, joining the Beatles (19), Jay-Z (14), and Drake, Bruce Springsteen, and Streisand (each with 11).
Swift has also scored the biggest modern-era sales week for a vinyl album since Luminate began tracking music sales in 1991 with 575,000 vinyl LPs sold. The previous record was held by Harry Styles’ Harry’s House, which debuted with 182,000 vinyl copies earlier this year. Midnights also had the third-biggest streaming week ever for an album, following Drake’s Scorpion and Certified Lover Boy. Overall, it had 1.140 million album sales, 419,000 streaming equivalent album units, and 19,000 track equivalent album units.
It’s the night of Saturnalia, some years into the future, in Philadelphia. Stephanie Feldman’s protagonist, Nina, is behind on her rent and takes what she thinks will be a quick odd job from her friend, Max, to deliver a gift at a party. It’s not as easy as it seems, though, and Nina spends her Saturnalia flowing in and out of grand parties, reckoning with magic, alchemy, and spirituality, and trying to escape what happened to her three Saturnalias ago.
Set over the course of one night, Saturnalia is an adventure story and commentary on climate, elitism, and a thriller all rolled into one.
OurCulture spoke to Stephanie Feldman about magic, worldbuilding, and the challenge of fast-paced fiction.
Congratulations on your new novel, Saturnalia! How does it feel to have a second book out?
Well, it feels really good! That’s the easy answer. It took me about seven or eight years to get the second book out. It was not an easy process. I wrote a few other things that just didn’t work, I finally found Saturnalia, which I think was the right story at the right time, so it feels really good to be getting out there again.
I thought the fantasy element of the book was really interesting, especially when it was smashed up against the banalities of everyday life. Nina is going through this whole magical journey, when the end goal is to be able to pay rent. Why did you want to mix a fantasy version of Philadelphia with some real-life elements?
I guess I’m always very interested in what happens in the real world, and so much of her story is about real-life pressures. Financial pressures, social pressures, climate anxiety, the things that keep me up at night or keep a lot of us up at night. In that sense, the book is about our experience today. I put it in a fantasy world because I think that’s just how I think. It’s fun to develop this other version of Philadelphia that’s the same as our American cities today in some very core ways — related to social class or hierarchies and the struggles we have just to get through today— but also to envision a much larger future.
Did you go out and get inspiration from the city when writing?
I grew up in Philly, and I lived there until I went to college, and then I came back. So it’s my hometown and my backyard. It’s funny — I didn’t go out in the city at first to investigate or follow [Nina’s] journey. So much of it was just the Philadelphia I’ve absorbed over a lifetime, thinking about the key places I wanted her to visit, that would also be fun to reimagine. And then with a little bit of a puzzle, from the writing perspective as well, because the book takes place over one night. So I was thinking about, ‘Where could she actually go? What could she see?’ Also, trying to find some other sides of Philly, like, I went to the Penn Archaeology Museum for the first time while I was writing the book at the beginning, just as a family outing. They were like, ‘Wow, you’ve never been here?’ because it’s such a great building and it speaks so much to the history of the university and its role in archaeology and colonialism, which is a whole other thing. But I thought it was a great place. The Mütter Museum as well is a great place, it’s one doctor’s collection of medical oddities. And it felt like the obvious place to set this book, so I didn’t let Nina go there. I had to find some other places. So the Philadelphia in the book was drawn from my own history, but also the places I was continuing to discover.
The book was so action-filled, which was a nice change of pace for me as I usually gravitate towards slow burns. What made you gravitate having it take place during a short amount of time, and to have it so ‘go go go’?
I’ll be honest, some of it was spite. [Laughs] Because I had been writing other projects, and one criticism I had received was that everything was too slow, and that the stakes weren’t high enough. I disagreed, but nobody cared what I thought. I really wanted to prove that I could write a page-turner, maybe just to even prove it to myself. I set it over one night first because I thought it was an interesting form, and as an experiment to see if I could do it. And also, I think to help myself out a bit as a writer. I was creating such a big world and a huge mythology, and I said, ‘Let me give myself some restraints, so that I can do this world without losing my character’s arc.’
It also makes sense within Nina’s context, because the Saturnalia three years ago was so important to her. It felt a little Great Gatsby as well — There’s all these parties, and the general theme is that it’s The Big Night, that tomorrow it’s back to normal.
Yeah, and I was also actually inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s The Mask of the Red Death, which is kind of not funny, but interesting now that we’ve been through a pandemic, because it’s a book about illnesses. I started writing this before COVID, so maybe I was a little prescient drawing on that. I was drawn to this story about rich people who think they can isolate themselves and enjoy luxury while everyone else is suffering, which I think is something we’re seeing now. The Saturnalia party in one night was a great set piece to investigate that.
A real appreciation of tarot cards, alchemy, and spirituality is present in the book — what made you interested in writing about these general themes?
I started getting interested in divination as a topic for the book because so much of it is about fears for the future, and our own fears. I was talking to another writer friend, saying, in the past few years, there’s so much more instability and worrying day to day what will come next. I don’t like uncertainty myself. I thought, ‘How great would it be if I could just know what would happen tomorrow.’ That’s how the characters in the book feel — tarot and divination became a way of exploring that fear. I came to alchemy because I really wanted to write about the homunculus. Not to give too much away, but it’s this particular alchemical element I was so drawn to, and that led me down the path of alchemy and I thought, ‘There’s so much great stuff here.’ Symbolically, the imagery of it, and thematically, too.
Would you consider writing more in this particular world, or going back to stories rooted in realism?
I have mostly written pieces set in the real world, even when there’s a speculative element to it. I’m working on something now that is also the real world, but the characters discover some secret, speculative element. I think that’s mostly where I gravitate — I don’t usually write any secondary worlds, but it was a lot of fun. So if I get a good idea, I might get it again.
Alliances constantly change, and the general vibe of the book at the end is a 180 turnaround from the beginning. How did you keep track of all these changes?
I’m glad you thought it worked, because it was a lot to iron out. I was able to stay really focused on Nina and what she wanted, and I could think of her relationships to other characters in the book as ones that reflected back on each other into her own core need, which was to overcome her trauma and insecurity and find her own power, addressing the past. So her relationships with these characters are fractured in different ways. On top of that, I laid these conspiracies — the people who she thinks are her enemies, the people who are actually her enemies, enemies who turn out to be friends — and I think searching for those reversals in the book helped me build out the story.
After leaving the Saturn Club three years ago, Nina constantly goes from place to place, and eventually realizes that maybe none of them are right for her. I love her line describing herself as a “secret society of one.” Do you feel similarly to her, that you’re more of a do-it-yourself type?
I’m not sure — I always go back and forth on whether I’m an introvert or an extrovert. Because I really love my alone time, but I also really need my friendships and relationships, especially as a writer, because it’s a really solitary pursuit. Maybe that’s where that line came from — when you’re a writer, especially working on a novel for several years, maybe no one even sees it for a year or two. Maybe you are a secret society of one. You’ve built this world in your head, and no one else is there or engaging with it! And maybe during the pandemic, we all sort of discovered that more, the extremes, and learned about what we needed. For me, it’s a balance.
You mentioned this previously, but are you working on anything else right now?
I am working on a novel! I’m always working on a novel. That’s my mission statement in life. I’m also working on short stories, and also teaching and editing. I love having that balance — it’s great to have a longer work to engage in. It’s also great to have something smaller that you can complete and put out. Like I said, engaging with other writers — reading other people’s work, editing, teaching, also helps me as a writer and in developing my eye for other projects.
