You Vulture readers have been clamoring for it … we’ve been nervously anticipating its reception … here, without further ado: Our inaugural slideshow of rock critics at a reading! (Uh-oh — you just nerdgasmed at work!) “Stories in High Fidelity,” sponsored by the new music-writing-themed Website of the same name, brought Blender’s Rob Sheffield, authors Marc Spitz and Dan Kennedy, dean of rock critics Robert Christgau, and newly minted novelist Chuck Klosterman before a Highline Ballroom audience lusty for the seriously geeky shit. And as if the glamour shots of these men aren’t enough to get you clicking, we’ve captioned them with the cleverest bits from each guy’s reading.
Rob read to us about his first Replacements show – and how he was once convinced that another first, his inaugural pot-smoking adventure, directly resulted in the death of Jorge Luis Borges.
Marc, reading from a work-in-progress on David Bowie, explained how a super-coked-up Thin White Duke (more paranoid than a young, stoned Rob Sheffield) was once convinced that “there were witches after his semen.”
Dan shared a chapter from Rock On, his memoir of life as a record exec, that concerned his attempting small talk with his boss’s lapdog. This had nothing to do with drugs.
Bob presented an essay on the Big Sur Folk Festival of 1970 that was good listening for any freak-folk fans curious about
“hip culture … living up to its own pretensions.”
Chuck brought the night full circle describing a weed-induced but not entirely unjustified freak-out he experienced while being driven to a Guns N’ Roses cover band’s gig by the group’s wasted “Axl.”
