Now Playing, Part 14

Our August issue is just about ready into your life, and you know what that means: it's time to check in with our contributors and hear about what they've been listening to, watching, and playing.

Mark Galarrita

I’ve been listening to "You Can’t Hurry Love" by The Supremes and other Motown classics because of my partner, I miss her.

Natanya Ann Pulley

New York Dolls, self-titled album (lately, again, always, predictably so). And the repeating trailers or montage for every Netflix show as I scroll through suggestion after suggestion unsure of what I want to lose myself in. I long for the next great sci-fi. But I usually end up with Parks and Rec or some show with a self-destructive or prickly or distressed homicide detective grumbling throughout the U.K. I <3 Vera. 

W. Todd Kaneko

Last month, twenty-five years after I first saw them play in a commercial garage refashioned into a music venue in Seattle, I went to see L7 play on their reunion tour in a club near my house inGrand Rapids, Michigan. I was standing next to an older couple who were taking up a lot of space, like they weren’t used to being packed into a punk rock show and weren’t going to budge so some of us could get a better view of the stage. Along with the rest of the people around me, I was feeling too middle-aged and too polite to bother them, but I did tweet something snarky about how old people take up too much space. When L7 came on, one of them took out a camcorder and started taping the show. I didn’t think anything of it until Donita Sparks announced that her parents were in the house and I was like, oh snap—because I think Donita Sparks’ parents should take up as much space wherever they want.

So I’ve been listening to a lot of L7 lately: mostly bingeing on their albums Smell the Magic and Bricks Are Heavy. The other day my two-year-old son walked in while “Packin a Rod” was playing and he started jumping up and down like he was trying to break the floor. Afterwards, he said to me, “Daddy what does ‘packin a rod’ mean?” and I’ve since decided that I need to be better prepared for the difficult questions I know my son is going to ask me.