Archive for Die Kreuzen

The Bad Penny’s Top 10 Music Books of 2025

Posted in Features, Lists, What You Readin' For? with tags , , , , , , , , , on 11/19/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Most music fans can’t read music. But they can read about music – the larger-than-life personalities, the history of various genres, the often-times truth-is-stranger-than-fiction dynamics that keep one of the entertainment industry’s least profitable yet universally beloved pillars standing.

For the first time ever, The Bad Penny shares what we consider to be the most essential nonfiction books about music that came out in a year during which citizens across the country tolerated book bans and censorship in Authoritarian America. Mark these words: What happened this year and is still happening in libraries and schools in the U.S. will go down as one of the most shameful “chapters” in this country’s history.

Read whatever books you want to read, and enjoy doing so, because in this unpredictable hellscape, who knows what rights we might lose next.

1. Patti SmithBread of Angels: A Memoir (McNally Jackson)

Buy here.

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Top 20 Touch and Go Bands of All Time

Posted in Lists with tags , , , , , , , , , on 09/06/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

(Note: The number of releases and duration of time spent by the bands on the label factored into this ranking. Nor did it take into account bands that issued records through Touch and Go‘s sister label, Quarterstick Records.)

1. Shellac
2. The Jesus Lizard
3. Big Black
4. Slint
5. Scratch Acid
6. Die Kreuzen
7. Don Caballero
8. Girls Against Boys
9. The Black Heart Procession
10. The Delta 72
11. Killdozer
12. Blonde Redhead
13. Didjits
14. Quasi
15. The New Year
16. Silkworm
17. Man or Astro-man?
18. Laughing Hyenas
19. Brick Layer Cake
20. CocoRosie

(PS: Fuck Butthole Surfers)