Apparently Blondie photographer Chris Stein has been sitting on a cache of killer flicks from decades past he hasn’t shared with the world until now. Being in one of the coolest bands in the world gave him access to basically everyone else cool, so he’s got photos of everyone, up close and personal. Read the interview he gave to Smithsonian about his new photo book and check out a slideshow of great shots.
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Welcome to the first annual Verge Hack Week. We’re totally blowing up our site: we’ve given our reporters and editors the entire week to play with new tools and experiment with new storytelling ideas, while members of our amazing product team have gathered in New York to help build all sorts of interesting new things. Learn more.
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Welcome to the first annual Verge Hack Week. We’re totally blowing up our site: we’ve given our reporters and editors the entire week to play with new tools and experiment with new storytelling ideas, while members of our amazing product team have gathered in New York to help build all sorts of interesting new things. Learn more.
Hello Verge readers, how are you? I’m Matthew Schnipper a behind the scenes dude here at your favorite website. You may not know me unless you are a deep Verge nerd. Another lifetime ago (six months ago) I was the editor of The FADER, a publication focusing on what’s next in music and culture. After covering many, many artists who were half my age and feeling both excited and, like, suicidal about that, I migrated to The Verge where I now oversee all of our large features and cool special projects (shout out to next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, btw).
While editing up a storm or whatever I have been #blessed to not have to keep up with any cool music which has enabled me to fall down a YouTube and Rdio rabbit hole. (Can you fall down a rabbit hole while at a standing desk? Unclear.) So while I learned about Bobby Shmurda along with the general population and still haven’t listened to the FKA Twigs album, I definitely have discovered and rediscovered a glut of sick jams in my nascent Verge days. In honor of Hack Week, here is a bunch of bullshit that is not in any way forward thinking, and totally indulgent, that, if you catch me in the right light, I will probably claim “changed my life.” May yours be changed as well. PS no Grateful Dead I spared u.
1. DJ Qu, “Runwitit”
Starting with the thing I got into most recently. I don’t know who DJ Qu is tbh, but saw his name in some British record store’s email newsletter, a thing, in the past, I would never have read because it was all about records that had already been released. The newsletter just said he was deep house and I liked the record sleeve so I googled. This song is kinda like samba deep house with twinkly parts aka I listened to it like 1000 times since yesterday.
2. Charlemagne Palestine, “Strumming Music”
What’s that? You also want to listen to a guy play two notes on a piano for an hour? Super beautiful and meditative. Think I went through round 4 of our Jesselyn Radack profile juiced on this guy.
3. Cryptopsy, “Open Face Surgery”
I’ve had some light dances with the death metal devil but never fully took her out to a salsa club (block that metaphor!). Since getting Rdio, I have discovered that basically every death metal record I have wanted to jam is readily available for me. Excellent music for when you need to just get hella shit done and block out the universe. Cryptopsy has proven to be a serious favorite due to their proggy nature. Technical death metal is really what I like FYI.
4. The Beverleys, “Bad Audio”
Classic scuzzy punk I kinda stumbled upon in a deep Bandcamp downward spiral and then listened to and excitedly told my friends I found a cool new punk band honestly because I actually did want to feel cool for once. Guess what it didn’t work. Totally sneering, sounds like it was recorded in a sweet trash can.
5. Ornette Coleman, “Spelling the Alphabet”
I went out to a wedding in San Francisco a month or so ago and spent a good deal of time just talking with my friend Jacob who lives out there, who I don’t get to see much. I also spent a lot of time trying to get his cats to like me, which eventually they did. Jacob and I had an indulgently long conversation about Ornette Coleman and the nature of language, credit for big ideas and perceived craziness. It was moving. Anyway, it ended with him saying I really should give a chance to some of Ornette’s Prime Time albums from the mid/late ’80s. This track, from ’88’s Virgin Beauty, is really quick and fun. Kinda punchy! I was a big jazz dork for awhile so nice to hear something like this I really slept on.
6. The xx, “Chained”
Man, no one cared about this record? Why? I’ve been jamming it lately at home and it’s really beautiful. “Chained” has this really sad and lovely couplet song in duet by Romy and Oliver, “Did I hold you too tight?/ Did I not let enough light in?” Maybe overall vibe-wise, Coexist is not as strong a statement as their kinda crushingly precocious debut, but the songwriting is just so much better. Worth a serious listen if you dismissed it, as many did.
7. Lana Del Rey, “Summertime Sadness (MK’s Feel it in the Air Remix)”
Not a Lana fan but holy crap this remix is huge. MK is a classic, classic dance floor dude and this shit just knocks so hard. Can Lana just make records that sound like this from scratch? I wonder if she has heard this. My coworker Michael sent this to me and I’ve had a tab of it open on my browser for days and days. I bought a bootleg 12-inch of it on eBay which I feel excited to tell you, then embarrassed, then excited.
8. Whitney Houston, “Million Dollar Bill (Frankie Director’s Cut Signature Club Mix)”
I discovered this remix when Frankie Knuckles died. I’d always been fond of the original, a fairly joyous track, but Knuckles elevates it. The drums are hard and Whitney is just going off! The filter is like steam sizzling off the pavement in the summer. God I am listening to this again now and it just such a huge jam. This is like the pure joy I felt dancing at my Bar Mitzvah bottled. Best dancing ever? Potentially.
9. Flipper, “Shed No Tears”
Tired of feeling good? Me too! Flipper was a big important band for me as a little young dude feeling lots of feelings but I’m not sure I really comprehended the sublimity of this song’s existential dread until recently. Shed no tears for the suicide/ He had made his choice/ The pain of life is great. Kinda? Not sure? But gosh do they make you feel like that is the only way to think. Had an unhinged moment where I was just listening to this nonstop. Shed no tears for the cop bleeding/ He once held a gun... Still apt for our times. Blech, though.
10. Sonic Youth, “I Love You Golden Blue”
If you are like me, you did not get into the late-period Sonic Youth albums. Rdio changed that, as I slowly went through looking for the intersection of the pretty songs with the Kim songs and the Lee songs. “I Love You Golden Blue,” the second to last track on 2004’s Sonic Nurse, is blissfully tender, Kim Gordon whispering sweet nothing about a “dead boy.” Her voice lilts, kind of scratchy over shy guitar. I have listened to this 1 million times.
11. Origin, “The Burner”
I used to get the Relapse Records catalog in the mail when I was in middle school because somehow I had heard about Brutal Truth and was obsessed with them, but the death metal section was just too deep for me. So recently I just sorted by label in Rdio and went through everything on Relapse I never heard. Look, realistically, I don’t know shit about death metal. I can’t sell you on this. I’m not an expert. I just like crazy drums! This shit sounds absurd. It does not sound like music made by humans.
12.Julius Steinhoff, “Cheetah Nights”
Possibly my favorite discovery of the last six months. I’ve taken to reading Resident Advisor most days and this came highly recommended, plus the album cover has a drawing of a dog wearing a baseball cap so I had to check it out. It’s a very neatly contained house record. Not wildly adventurous but meticulous and thusly compelling it in expertise. Like, maybe it does not go 110%? Not every record needs to be Yeezus. Maybe it tries for 95% only, but boy does it hit a home run on that 95%, a full 100% on the 95%. Do you know what I mean?
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If you’re one of the lucky few to have entered into the world of the Oculus Rift, it’s likely you were unfazed by Facebook scooping up the young company for $2 billion earlier this year. To many, Palmer Luckey, Oculus’ precocious leader, has taken this utopian technology into the next phase of its multivalent history. Infinitely curious about its future, we at The Verge also wanted to properly investigate its past. Coming Monday is our massive investigation into virtual reality’s rise and fall — and rise. Stay tuned!
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Nothing unites Americans more than crappy download speeds. Add in cronyism, old white guys dictating laws, and a taste of class war and you’ve got the really stupid proposal to abandon net neutrality currently moving its way through the FCC’s hallowed chambers. Expertly explained by Nilay Patel in his “The Internet is Fucked” essay, rampant protest to the FCC has been nibbling away at the foregone conclusion that the internet’s proletariat would soon all become serfs to the telecommunications industry. To continue that fight for good, John Oliver asked not just those used to being outspoken in the face of corporate greed to speak up, but those outspoken in the face of memes to use their powerful tools of trolling, comments, to get the FCC’s attention. All of those comments are public on the FCC’s site, and we decided to take a look at what America is telling Tom Wheeler. Most of what they’re saying is eloquent, smart, and considered. But some of what they are saying is angry, gross, and incoherent. That’s our favorite type of dialogue. So, for your reading pleasure, we’ve gathered the best of the best (worst?) of public feedback.
Bill
Knock it off douche bags
fuck the freaking fcc
DIE now fucking fcc complaint shit bitches who try to get all that we DESERVE RIGHTFULLY
Captain Obvious
STOP THE CABLE COMPAANIES FROM RAPING ME!!!! IF YOU LET THEM HAVE HYPER SPEEDS THEY WILL JUST USE THEM TO HYPER RAPE!!!! DON’T YOU SEE!?
James Coletta
Holy shit you are fucking up.
James
DONT RUIN THE INTERNET YOU IDIOTS
Scott Huey
Don’t start another era of robber barons you assholes.
Keith Shaffer
Forwarded to all my friends – is it acceptable taste to say “Comcast suks” LOL, well that’s what I think
John Malkovich
please dont fuck up the internet with this net neutrality bullshit, you guys! cmon! people like having an open internet, dont fuck this us for everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jason
Bro,fuck off with your FCC crap.Im gonna send Anonymous on your ASS!
Jake Longstock
I’m so disgusted with this idea, I have logged onto a friends computer to shed some light on this issue.. HELL NO, ABSOLUTELY NOT… I HAVE NEVER MET ONE PERSON THAT CAN SHOW ME EVEN A SHITTY REASON OF WHY THIS WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA
Paul Allen
A Fast lane is NOT net neutrality. I have lost all faith in the chairman’s leadership. He is nothing more than a corporate shill. Plus I bet he has a tiny penis. I want REAL NET NEUTRALITY.
patrick
Comcast and Wheeler can both suck my cock and lick every square inch of my sack.
David Bravo
what the fuck is wrong with you? for real? it’s for money right? yeah, it’s for money. anything for money. you know, you remind me of this one girl i used to know. she used to be real cool. now she sucks dick for meth.
Mike Oxawopper
Wheeler suck my cock, please.
Jack Nicholas
Do you have any Idea what will happen if you allow TWC and Comcast to do this? You will have single handily allow them to fuck everyone in the ass while at the same time flush the concept of net neutrality down the fucken toilet. What happens if HBO or Showtime wants a little bit more money for their hard earned work in trying to bring me, the user, the best programing they can? Well I hope they like sucking dick because that is the only way they will get any money from them, they literally will have to jack everyone off at TWC or Comcast at the same time in order to get a response. Please don’t allow them to do this because I would not like a giant cock up my ass.
Clayton Gray
Are you going to make history? C’mon guys, stop sucking the corporate company’s dicks for money. Let them go fuck themselves and keep the internet they way you know it should be, free and open. You aren’t making the final decision but you are making a precedent. You are representing AMERICA, and you have a chance to act independent of corporate fuckhead lobbyists like Congress or the House does. If you support the TRUE open internet you will go down in history in saving the internet from the money thieving shits that actually run our country. If they are black mailing you or threatening to kill you, expose those fuckers. Someone or multiple people are imposing their will upon you. You just gonna sit there and take it?
Bbcaulk
My nipples hurt thinking of this shit. U wanna b a Baller, shot caller have 22 inch blades on the impala
JEFF BUCKINGHAM
“We the People” have to keep the AmericaNazi Party– mostly Republicanazis, actually– and the Gestapo Bush Family and their C.S “New World Odor” away from the only viable worldwide channel to bring Freedom to the World, expose World Capitalism as the RightWing Totalitarianism that it wants to be. We also WILL expose the Most Massive CoverUp in History (Next to Big Oil’s LIES that petroleum is the ONLY way for Future energy)= CIA’s and MJ-12’s burying and Disinformation (@) UFO’s and all the artifacts of Theirs so Humans cannot get TO Their Technology and Free EVERYONE!!!
ME
I have no idea what this plan is all i know is that it is attached to the FCC so fuck it, fuck you, fix your reputation before you choose to get feedback, how about that? dip shits. go suck a fuck. sounds dumb? yea well it’s from a movie, a line you probably never heard, maybe you heard this though. yea go beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep p.s. goooo fuck yourself, or in your language… goooo yourself
Stephen Inzunza
Hey, I like the internet. I think you like the internet, too. I think you remember fond memories of searching the net, indiscriminately. Don’t take that away from others, from fresher generations. The internet is a tool for expression and social change. Okay, mostly it is for adorable cat photos with captions. Don’t take the cat out of the meow! Or the meow out of the cat? Free porn for all who fight to protect our internet!!! For Aslan! For Steve Jobs! For Bill Gates! For for! For for for! FOR FOR FOR FOR!
Cody Raich
You run a monopoly and expect to continuously fuck our asses. Do not in any way create another path to the internet. My goal is to create a cable company to bring you to your knees. The FCC is ran by a former cable company propaganda arm. This isn’t Columbia. You will get fucked for this. Fuck you. sincerely, Aspiring congressman Cody Raich
Connor Hoy
Hello FCC, My name is Connor Hoy and I have come here to protest your actions in relation to the Net Neutrality Act. The internet has thrived for two decades now as a place of communication, commerce and relationship development. However, your current actions are threatening all that the internet currently is and what it stands for. Your doing this becuase your assholes. You want our money… Hey! I want to go on Reddit! You: “Hello there sir, are you ready to pay your daily internet fine?” Me: “Oh sure thing sir, let me just bend over so you can continue to fuck me in the ass.” That’s what your doing. Your fucking the internet and the billions that use it in the ass. Fuck you, I already wrote a few letters to my senators and congressman. I kindly ask you, to reconsider your actions in regards to the Net Neutrality Act. Everyone likes the internet how it is now….why change it?
Nicholas Nelson
You people are out of your damn mind if you think we’re just going to roll over and let you and the telecom companies FUCK THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IN THE ASS FUCK YOU WHEELER, IF I SEE YOUR LILY WHITE ASS IN THE STREETS WE WILL SEE WHO THE REAL AMERICAN MAN IS, YOU CORPORATE PUPPET SELL OUT FUCK! And seriously you wage-slaves reading this need to seriously reconsider what the fuck your organization is doing right now to the American people for a couple of lousy fucking dollars
Adam Nickells
As a citizen of the United States I demand that ISP’s be classified as a Common Carrier type II as well as integrating strong Net Neutrality regulations that prohibit fast lanes and slow lanes. In fact all ISPs should be FORCED to upgrade their infrastructure regularly, we are one of the worst nations in the world for internet speeds and accessibility when bandwidth is a laughably low cost for ISPs and the speed to price ratio is horribly skewed in favor of corporate profit margins. Stop. Fucking. Us. IN. THE. ASS.
Cristine Salas
You just suck. You’re like that ex-boyfriend that won’t go away, or the ex-girlfriend who is still unbelievably clingy even though the relationship ended years ago. You’re that kid no one wanted to play with on the playground and now that you have seemingly universal control over everyone who was ever mean to you, instead of using your powers for good, you’ve become Mark Cuban–an arrogant asshole. You already know you’re hated, not only by your constituents but, also by people from other countries. Shouldn’t that tell you something? I can’t stand the FCC, but you guys are fucking everywhere. Lol! This is funny because we still hate you. You try to get us to like you and we STILL HATE YOU. All your amazing ideas are bullshit and the fact that we’re going to do what we want to do is something you can’t control. You may control the internet, but you don’t control me. Or anyone else for that matter. Fuck you and burn.
tim
stop trying to destroy net neutrality. the internet is not a theme park, it does not need a fast pass like 6 flags. do you remember the fat kids trying to cut in front of you in line in middle school? that shit sucked didn’t it? you stood there thinking to yourself, well why does that fatass get to eat lunch before me? he shouldnt be able to get away with that! well what your metaphorically doing is installing a line just for the fat kids to get served before everyone else while they just stand in line! doesnt that sound fair?!?!
Anthony Pritchett
Dear Tom Wheeler, If you do this I will hunt you down and murder you and your fucking family in cold blood! This isnt a fucking joke moron! Is this really worth losing your life over? Dont fuck with me. Dont fuck with Net Neutrality. Dont fuck with the american people asshole. We’ll drag you and your corporate slave masters out of your home and put a bullet between your skull. I advise you to reconsider. You have been warned.
Good job killing the internet assholes
Yeah wow brilliant Let’s just turn the open web into a big steaming heap of shit I love it great job everyone over there should get raises. I mean what a brilliant idea, let’s restrict what we have instead of building on and improving it. Let’s go ahead and dumb down the single greatest tool we have. Let’s just wreck more shit for our upcoming generations. Fuck them, right? Fuck you.
Fuck Tom Wheeler
Don’t. Fucking. End. Net. Neutrality. The only fucking reason the internet has become the greatest achievement of the human race since the fucking wheel is because its is open. There is no fucking god damn reason to limit the speeds of any information is to line the fucking pockets of the cable companies. Fuck them. Fuck Comcast, fuck Time Warner, fuck Bright House, fuck Earth Link, fuck every single one of them. All of their service is terrible, and they don’t do shit about it. And fuck Tom Wheeler. Hes a faggot and a cunt and the only thing he deserves while he continues to run as the head of the FCC is a salt, lime, and razor lined horse dildo ramming him continuosly until he begs for reprieve, only to be met with the cold eyes of ethical judgement and further anal torture. But really, ending net neutrality is bullshit.
Dick F. Hugh
Fuck this oligarchy that is willing to crush the future of technology and the internet for some short term financial gain. I hope you all rot for selling us out. I hope your grand children never know or love you, and I hope that your favorite hobby will forever lack the joy it once had for you. You are greed hungry liars, and you’ve doomed us all.
Barack obama
Comcast and twc can lick a bag of balls if those company’s get their way, every fucktard and Cuntard in the FCC should be fired . The corporations are going to squeeze every penny out of their customers, and in the end they will be fazed out byinnovation. But I know this message will probably be erased by you fucking nigger, faggot, smelly cunts of the FCC . Yours truly Barack Obama President of the United States of America
Aristotle
YOU PEOPLE ARE GARBAGE IF YOU THINK YOU CAN DO THIS TO THE INTERNET. I UNDERSTAND THIS WOULD PROBABLY PAY YOUR STAFF HANDSOMELY AND ALLOW YOU TO TAKE YOUR SHITTY WIVES AND TERRIBLE CHILDREN ON VACATION AN EXTRA 3 DAYS EVERY YEAR BUT YOU’RE DOING A DISSERVICE TO THE PEOPLE WHOSE LIVELIHOOD DEPEND ON QUALITY INTERNET AND TO THOSE WHO ACCESS IT FOR THE INCREDIBLE INFORMATION IT POSSESSES. IT’S AMAZING THAT YOU’RE EVEN CONSIDERING THIS, BUT I GUESS MONEY BREEDS CORRUPTION AND STIFLES LOGICAL THOUGHT. YOU ARE A SHITTY ORGANIZATION AND YOU DESERVE PAIN AND SUFFERING.
Evan Lillis
The head of this FCC apparently use to lobby for the cable companies. What a shock. The people making this decision to give cable companies the freedom to slow down and speed up internet speeds for more money so disgustingly evil that there is NO DOUBT in my mind THAT ANYONE ASSOCIATED WITH THIS DECISION IS SURELY GOING TO HELL. I HOPE THE EXTRA MONEY IS WORTH IT NOW, BC ETERNAL DAMNATION AWAITS!! I PROMISE YOU THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Christian Dauz
Net Neutrality provides the same protection for the Internet, the First Amendment does for people living in this nation. To even THINK of removing this is to THINK LIKE A NORTH KOREN DICTATOR, DON’T THINK THAT YOU POLITICIAN-MINDED THINK THIS IS OKAY CAUSE ITS NOT OKAY!To remove Net Neutrality is to go to the side of Adolf Hitler and Mussolini. To go and burn the books and silence the opposition. To REMOVE Net Neutrality, is to DESTROY the economy! If any REPUBLICAN supports removing the barrier of freedom against the rich, the tyrannous or the greedy, then YOU ARE A HYPOCRITE TO EVERYTHING YOUR PARTY, YOUR ANCESTORS, YOUR NATION STANDS FOR!!! The GOV’T IS CORRUPT!!! TAKING AWAY MORE AND MORE OF OUR RIGHTS!!! THE ECONOMY IS STAGNATING!!! POLITICIANS ARE BECOMING MORE AND MORE DESPOTIC!! IF NET NEUTRALITY IS LOST THEN THE FOREFATHER’S DREAM OF A FREE AMERICA IS LOST!!! WE MIGHT AS WELL BE PIGS!!!
Michael Sziede
Dear FCC people: Excuse me, but exactly how far are your heads inserted into your own rectums? You complete douches, I hope you all die of ass cancer. We all know perfectly well that what you are doing is the exact opposite of net neutrality; and you’re doing it while calling it net neutrality. Great marketing, you jerks. You suck and we really, really hate you. Die. Sincerely, Mike Sziede Citizen
Adam
The internet must stay open and unbiased without corporate control or censorship. To do so would destroy the one major resource for news and education without company persuasion. Dont make people have to weed through the filth of major news sources like CNN twitter responses and FOX drama reenactments to find sparkles of whats actually happening. Offering packages for websites and blocking websites that dont meet the corporate status will without a doubt spark massive protests. If you are reading this far then thank you for listening to one voice. if you are not then i wanna say i wish dolphins had legs and self contained water suits and we need to spend money in RandD to get that going, thank you for your time.
Jane Ruiz
You are ruining the only platform for change and hope that exists on this planet. Whatever gains and benefits you foresee from making this change, I hope it’s worth this immense loss. This is worse than the BP spill, deforestation and maybe even mass genocide, as having an open internet allows for an infinite number of possibilities that include an open forum for stopping these terrible things. You are putting limits on the only world away from this one that hasn’t become strangulated by politics and red tape. You know what you’re doing and if you choose to go through with these changes, you’re terrible people. In the words of Plato, “This fucking sucks balls.”
aaron leneve
Your rich people fast lanes are the road to revolution. we will steal back our air waves. we will go around your greedy fat asses.we will fight back. you will loose. fuck you and the nsa cia fbi. corporations still aint people. nasa you’re cool.
Yoni Ruvim
Allowing internet service providers the opportunity to provide different websites with different delivery speeds is a terrible idea. There is little to no competition between ISPs and this will lead to disasterous consequences far beyond what you can imagine. But since its going to happen anyways, lets watch the house burn together, but I will do so knowing that at least I raised my voice and tried.
We love TV and we love recaps, but a lot of times it’s not the big-picture plot developments that make a show great. It’s the little things; the details of the dialogue, set design, props, and performance. For Close Up, we’ll be taking a look at the coolest moments and most interesting details in some of our favorite shows. We’re kicking things off with the series premiere of Halt and Catch Fire.
There’s been plenty of talk about AMC’s newest drama, and even if you didn’t watch last night, the broad strokes are pretty straightforward: Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace) is a shady IBM salesman who talks his way into a gig at a Texas software company called Cardiff Electric. He’s not just looking for a job, of course, because a guy getting a job selling computers would make for a really boring show.
Joe’s a three-dimensional chess manipulator, and his big play is to force Cardiff into cloning the IBM PC. To make that happen, he enlists a disillusioned engineer named Gordon (Scoot McNairy) and a manic pixie dream programmer named Cameron — who seems to be much smarter, and more volatile, than Joe realizes. Halt also happens to be set in 1983, which means there are plenty of interesting things to explore — when you look at it close up.
While throwing a dismissive eye towards Joe’s advances, Cameron mentions that technology “is an industry built on people ripping off each other’s boring-ass ideas.” She follows it up with a list of names — SCP, CP/M, Microsoft — but what’s she actually talking about?
Long before “Redmond, Start Your Copiers,” there was a California company named Digital Research, Inc. DRI built an operating system called CP/M, which ended up becoming a de facto industry standard. Multiple versions were made for various processors, but Seattle Computer Products — that’s the SCP Cameron refers to — found itself behind the eight ball when it shipped a new product and DRI fell behind on the compatible software. SCP went ahead and built its own version instead, naming it Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS) — a project that, in the annals of tech lore, is seen as directly ripping off CP/M.
Meanwhile, IBM had partnered with Microsoft to get an operating system for its upcoming personal computer. Microsoft bought QDOS to get the job done, but as the story goes it didn’t reveal that it was working with IBM — and got the operating system for a relative steal. QDOS went on to become PC DOS when provided by IBM, and MS-DOS when purchased from Microsoft — and once PC clones became commonplace, Microsoft’s dominance was on.
One of the things that convinces Joe that Gordon is the right guy to partner with is an article he wrote for Byte magazine, a hugely influential computing publication in the 1970s and ’80s. In the show, Gordon’s article was published in the February 1979 issue, where readers at the time could have taken a look at some of these gems:
Standing in the parking lot, trying to fire up Gordon after getting turned out by the bosses, Joe screams praise at him: “I was at Comdex two years ago! I saw the Symphonic demo! It was ahead of its time!” In the ’80s, Comdex was the premiere show for personal computing, a predecessor to CES. Short for Computer Dealers Exhibition, it was started by the Interface Group, which was, amazingly, partially owned by everyone’s favorite scooter-riding Super PAC superman, Sheldon Adelson. The show stopped in 2003; by then it was a pretty serious geeks-only event, but when Halt takes place it would have been the place to see the kind of work these two were churning out.
When we first meet Gordon he’s getting out of the drunk tank, but when he switches to soda his beverage of choice is Dr Pepper. Originally created in Texas — a fitting selection, given the show’s setting — good ol’ Dr Pepper actually beat Coca-Cola to market way back in 1885. It’s also infinitely better than Coke’s knock-off Mr. Pibb (though let’s be honest; if you’re in a pinch, Mr. Pibb is still way better than either Coke or Pepsi) .
We counted three different moments where the vintage Dr Pepper can makes an appearance: when Donna comes home to find Gordon hanging out at the house, amidst the technological chaos of the Reverse Engineering-athon, and when Gordon fixes his daughter’s Speak & Spell (where he actually takes the can apart, True Detective-style). If you’ve spotted more, drop them in the comments below — and let’s just hope the horrible old Mountain Dew logo doesn’t show up in future episodes.
Firstly, if anyone knows what song Cameron is listening to in the opening scene, please tell us in the comments. She’s obviously hella punk and listening to something raging, but that little clip wasn’t enough to clue us in. Later, towards the end of the episode, Cameron is in the arcade playing Centipede again using her trick quarter. She’s got her Walkman and she’s listening to The Vandals. A SoCal punk band, they had just formed when Halt takes place. “Wanna Be Manor” is the first song off their first EP, Peace Thru Vandalism, released in 1982. The band is still around, 35 years later.
Gordon, on the other hand, is more mainstream. Sulking in the house, of course drinking a Dr Pepper, he puts on “Lodi” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. The lyrics: “Somewhere I lost connections, ran out of songs to play / I came into town, a one night stand, looks like my plans fell through / Oh lord, stuck in Lodi again.” Lodi is a small town in California or, for the purpose of this scene, a metaphorical land inhabited expressly not by his computer wizard dreams but strictly by his domestic life. Stuck in Lodi forever, it seems. Drink up, Dr Pepper.
What did you think of the first episode of Halt and Catch Fire, and what were some of your favorite details? Sound off below — and let the spoilers fly!
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Some years ago, the routine thump of four-four house music made it out of Chicago and into international dance clubs. Since then, it’s crept slowly onto setlists, airwaves, and into stadiums. House has become a global force, socially and economically, far removed from its fairly humble beginnings as an early ’80s soundtrack to a small pocket of the Windy City.
One of the main engines for house from the start was Frankie Knuckles, widely known as The Godfather of House, who died yesterday at the age of 59. Knuckles (who was actually originally born in The Bronx) moved to Chicago when he was young and set up residence at The Warehouse, the club whose distinct style gave house its name. Knuckles was a popular DJ there — he remained one up until his death, even playing last month at Miami’s Winter Music Conference — but his true legacy is in his production work. Songs like “Your Love,” “Baby Wants to Ride,” and “It’s a Cold World” are truly house at its purest, mixing deep percussion with sinister overtones, perfect for a dark club and a salacious evening.
There’s already a street in Chicago named after him
What house became is built on those early tracks, his young explorations as a producer becoming the blueprint for countless other producers three decades later. As his career extended into the ’90s, he worked further in the sunshine, eventually penning what is arguably his signature track, “The Whistle Song.” It’s a lovely song, with its ethereal extended introduction on the flute and the drums’ funky rumblings, all moved steadily along by an upbeat whistling for the wordless chorus. That implicit joy stayed with him, as a DJ, a producer, and a smiler (he had some serious pearly whites, and no qualms about showing them off) up until his death.
There’s already a street in Chicago named after him, so we can’t offer something quite as monumental, but here’s a quick primer on some of his greatest jams. While you may not know his name, in your heart and in your head you already know his sound.
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