Hit Repeat Until I Hate Music
It's launch week for the March Xness Anthology
So today’s the day we officially preview our first print anthology, which comes out this week from Split/Lip Press!
Of the nearly 700 essays March Xness has published over the first decade of this weird fun tournament we had to select only 40 to represent the range of what we do. This was, as you can imagine, very hard, and meant we had to leave so many absolute bangers out.
It includes every tournament winner—Aaron Smith on “Torn”; W. Todd Kaneko on “Crazy Nights”; Jim Ruland on “Marilyn, My Bitterness”; Elena Passarello on “Muskrat Love”; John Melillo on “Bound for the Floor”; Brooke Champagne on “One”; Dave Griffith on “It Takes Two”; and Sejal Shah on “1 Thing”—and 32 others, including a handful of extracurriculars from the first decade of March Xness.
The book includes essays by this list of badasses:
Erin Belieu, Matt Bell, Steph Brown, Mark Butler, Cameron Carr, Dan Chaon, James Charlesworth, Steven Church, Danielle Cadena Deulen, Danielle Evans, Melissa Faliveno, T. Fleischmann, Elisa Gabbert, J. Nicholas Geist, Danielle Geller, Ryan Grandick, Camellia-Berry Grass, Jennifer Gravley, Raquel Gutiérrez, Erin Keane, Porochista Khakpour, Drew Krewer, Kristine Langley Mahler, Laura Lorson, Karyna McGlynn, Lela Scott MacNeil, Ander Monson, Katie Moulton, Laura C. J. Owen, Kathleen Rooney, Amy Rossi, Justin St. Germain, Martin Seay, and J. Max Stinson.
Plus it comes with some bonus content too and an introduction by us (Ander and Megan) that covers the secret history of the tournament.
Mostly we think of this anthology as a way of legitimizing what this tournament is already about: music, culture, and memory, and especially the communities that have risen up around the tourney each year in March—and beyond.
Almost all of this and a lot more is on the site, which you can read for free anytime you like, but there’s something about a book, isn’t there?
And while we’re at it, we made a couple more things we just put up in the merch store: I Heart Sad Songs and I Cannot Lie / Final Four front and back T-shirt featuring our Final Four this year, and a camping mug, and a ceramic one.
You know, if you want to rep Xness!
See you tomorrow for the CHAMPIONSHIP GAME OF MARCH SADNESS 90S.
Ander & Megan