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The Nation

Nation, The

Founded in 1865, The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left". It is now also available in a digital edition.

16 articles

List of articles in the library

By date | By artist | Most recently added

The Firesign Theatre: Sixties Laugh-In: The Firesign Theatre

Retrospective by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 21 January 1999

"THEY'VE COME TO steal my dreams," whimpers a female voice. A series of male voices drifts past: "Get up, lady." "It's the trade of the ...

Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk: Charles Mingus' Aces Back to Back and other jazz reissues

Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 18 February 1999

FOR THE PAST year and a half, I've been spending most of my time between 1922 and 1979 – the years of Charles Mingus's birth ...

Tom Waits: Guthrie's Heir?: Tom Waits' Mule Variations

Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 6 May 1999

TOM WAITS IS an imaginary hobo. He cruises the oddball corners of American pop culture, collecting the deft and moving and loopy short takes he ...

Emmylou Harris: Born to Run: Emmylou Harris' Red Dirt Girl

Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 12 October 2000

THE SOUND OF Wrecking Ball (Elektra), Emmylou Harris's 1995 album produced by former Brian Eno/Neville Brothers associate Daniel Lanois, drew me back toward her. ...

All That Jazz: Ken Burns

Film/DVD/TV Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 12 January 2001

LET'S CUT TO the chase on Ken Burns's Jazz, which rolled out on PBS January 8, by invoking Wallace Stevens. ...

Buffalo Springfield: American Buffalo

Retrospective by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 9 August 2001

UNSTABLE CHEMISTRY can cause spectacular effects – that's one way to think of Buffalo Springfield. Another is to consider the band an American musical smorgasbord ...

Dave Van Ronk: Folk's Missing Link

Retrospective by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 4 April 2002

I WAS IN HIGH school in the 1960s when I first saw Dave Van Ronk at the Gaslight, one of those little cellar clubs that ...

The Band's Long Waltz

Retrospective by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 16 May 2002

WHEN I FIRST saw The Last Waltz in 1978, I almost walked out, although I was a fan of both director Martin Scorsese and The ...

Chet Baker: James Gavin: Deep in a Dream – The Long Night of Chet Baker

Book Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 27 June 2002

IT'S EASY TO rephrase Tolstoy's opening to Anna Karenina so it describes junkies, who all share an essential plot line: Who and how to hustle ...

Bob Dylan: Scene of the Crime: Bob Dylan at Newport

Essay by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 15 August 2002

EVERYONE KNOWS what happened thirty-seven years ago when Bob Dylan fronted an electric band at the Newport Folk Festival, which is why August 3 saw ...

Bruce Springsteen: Hey, He's Bruce

Essay by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 29 August 2002

WHEN BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN and the E Street Band, reunited to tour behind The Rising, came to Madison Square Garden on August 12, they juxtaposed '41 ...

Ani DiFranco: Blowin' in a New Wind

Essay by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 26 November 2002

AS THE 2002 election results came in, I surfed through 100 cable channels with nothing on and hit an infomercial hosted by John Sebastian for ...

Sweet Soul Music: Gerald Posner's Motown – Music, Money, Sex, and Power

Essay by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 23 December 2002

As Trent Lott struggled to "repudiate" segregation fifty years after it was outlawed, about the only point he left out of his incoherent counterattack is ...

Russell Simmons's Rap

Interview by Miles Marshall Lewis, The Nation, January 2003

RUSSELL SIMMONS, known for decades as Rush to his friends, is of average height and build for a man his age (45), with a clean-shaven ...

George Wein: Myself Among Others – A Life in Music

Book Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 26 June 2003

NOT MANY PEOPLE can say they changed the world and make it stick. In Myself Among Others: A Life in Music, George Wein does. Without ...

Ray Charles, Robert Quine: Remembering Ray Charles and Robert Quine

Obituary by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 24 June 2004

After Ronald Reagan's death, Ray Charles's version of 'Amazing Grace', one of Reagan's favourite songs, kept popping up on radio and TV. Why not? ...

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