David Greenwald

I spent the first week of December on a road trip through the western half of the U.S., which included a pretty awe-inspiring visit to the Grand Canyon. Perhaps they don’t ever put the snow-covered version in the movies because the Best Western Premium wouldn’t be able to handle the tourist traffic, but it’s well worth waiting until winter to go. Also a pleasure: fry bread in Tuba City, Ariz.; the Moab Brewing Co.’s unfiltered wheat ale in Moab, Utah; the sweet potato pancakes at Denver, Colo.’s Snooze; the 60-foot Van Gogh reproduction in Goodland, Kansas; the entire city of Lawrence. I also may or may not have sung Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me” during karaoke at the Satellite’s holiday party (YouTube footage has yet to emerge).

In writing news, I’ve joined the masthead of contributors at MTV’s Buzzworthy blog, where I’m doing a post or two a day on new songs and videos. Follow me there if you’d like to see a lot of exclamation points. It’s a freelance position, so don’t worry — Rick Ross and I are still hustling. In December, GQ published my first piece, an oral history of the menswear blogosphere that took me over a dozen interviews and nearly two months. If “double monks” or “Harris tweed” get your attention, you should find it edifying; from a broader perspective, I found the reporting interesting as an examination of a blogosphere subculture’s path to mainstream maturity. (I wish someone had written one for music bloggers circa 2007.)

Here’s the best of my work from November and December:

* Reblog This: The Oral History of Menswear Blogging (GQ.com)
* Album Review: Atlas Sound – Parallax (A.V. Club)
* Album Review: High Highs – High Highs (A.V. Club)
* Album Review: ARMS – Summer Skills (A.V. Club)
* AMAs 2011: Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj Win Big on Ladies’ Night (Billboard)
* RZA Talks Headphone Line, Movie-Making, Wu-Tang’s Future (Billboard)
* Song Premiere: Mansions on the Moon, ‘Leaves Fall’
* L.A. Unheard: Masxs’ ‘Computer’ Masquerade (L.A. Times)
* L.A. Unheard: Arts & Entertainment offers ‘Just a Little Moore’ (L.A. Times) (with my portrait of the band)

On Rawkblog and Rawktumblr:
* My complete best of 2011 coverage, including albums, songs and more
* Lovely UK folkies Alessi’s Ark premiered a Smiths cover with me, and I also had the first listen to the Explorers Club’s “Sweet Delights”
* 14 Ways Music Blogs Could Be Useful Again
* 2011: How We Drowned in the Buzz Ocean

Elsewhere:
* I joined We Listen For You for a soundcast on the state of music blogging
* Vanity Fair wrote a winking oral history of reading my GQ piece