Maggot Brain is a quarterly magazine published by Third Man Records, the Detroit-based independent record label founded by Jack White in 2001.
Edited by Mike McGonigal, Maggot Brain Magazine has an A-list cast of writers contributing to what is an extremely satisfying, straight-ahead music magazine. Content is both contemporary and archival centred around rock, punk, jazz and roots sounds, rounded out with artistic, literary and cultural musings.
There’s a slightly new look to the cover of Issue 13 as the MB logo changes every three issues. The cover story features Prince, with reprints of rare writings by the great writers Ann Powers, Michael A. Gonzales, and Greil Marcus.
Also in this issue, from the publisher:
- Mary Lattimore – the great LA-based harpist interviewed by RJ Smith.
- Audrey Golden’s Thought I Heard You Speak book on the role of women in Factory Records is celebrated with an interview by Jessica Beard.
- Negativland – amazing huge very very in-depth feature on the whole ‘Helter Stupid’ debacle – strap on in for this one, by Cory Frye.
- Roussel + Duchamp, illustrated – Philippe Lapierre delivers dozens of real and super-real vignettes of a posthumous relationship, with beautiful pointillistic drawings.
- Stewart Lee by Richard Gehr – an awesome and dare-we-say-deep chat with the world’s greatest living standup comedian.
- Katharina Kuhlenkampf drew this terrific comic strip about the delightful Go-Betweens song “Lee Remick.”
- Emeralds – Fred Thomas on the much-missed Ann Arbor-based drone explorers.
- High Risk Group by Tim Alborn – the full, fascinating story of the excellent, obscure Boston based 1980s alt-rock group.
- Joshua Gamma – Murat Cem Mengüç on the big show the artist curated which explores the relationship between Christian psychedelic aesthetics and American subcultures.
Killer columns: A really sweet one by Lucy Sante (who we are so stoked has been in every issue thus far as she is our favorite contemporary nonfiction writer), return of the hip-hop column (Paula Perry this time), tape column, reissue column on the 1990s band Moss Icon by Fred Thomas, and Mimi Lipson’s excellent advice column, the Korean pop psych great Kim Jung Mi – and Dorothy Berry on being Black in experimental music spaces.