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ryangibbs.bsky.social
Ryan Gibbs
@ryangibbs.bsky.social
100 followers 130 following 30 posts
Rhode Islander since 1989 | Music editor for @inbetweendrafts.bsky.social | Reporter for the Jamestown Press
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Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
mikeduquette.bsky.social
Among the albums affected was Neil Diamond’s 12 SONGS, a Top 5 album (his highest debut) that fell off the charts after the recall and caused a chain reaction that led him to take nearly his entire catalogue from Sony to Universal. Enormous unforced error!
stereogum.com Stereogum @stereogum.com · 5d
Happy 20th anniversary to the Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal, in which the company secretly installed software to hide DRM technology on CD buyers’ PCs. XCP was a security risk that led to public outcry, class action lawsuits, and, 20 years ago today, a recall of dozens of album titles.
November 16, 2025 at 8:53 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
scottgum.bsky.social
For years, advertising has been how Stereogum made money to pay its writers. While we made progress moving away from that model, Google AI search has decimated the business almost overnight. Today we relaunch with a greater focus on subscription. We’d love your support: stereogum.com/2478838/ster...
November 10, 2025 at 11:40 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
maura.bsky.social
turns out the answer to “are they malicious or just stupid” — a question often asked about big media boss types — is “yes, but sliiiightly more the former”
earlofedgecombe.bsky.social Blake Leyh @earlofedgecombe.bsky.social · Oct 11
If you think you know why US newspapers died, this feature documentary now streaming for free on PBS might surprise you. It wasn't the Internet. Newspapers were specifically targeted by vulture capitalists.

I composed the score for the film, which features electric cello & Crowfoot guitars.
Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink
A handful of journalists rebel against a hedge fund that is gutting newspapers nationwide.
www.pbs.org
October 12, 2025 at 1:25 AM
ryangibbs.bsky.social
I hope whoever did this is haunted by Merle Haggard songs randomly blasting at maximum volume out of every speaker they own.
lukeoneil47.bsky.social Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · Oct 1
Please report this fucking AI slop. Goddamnit. www.amazon.com/KALEB-HORTON...
October 1, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
nedraggett.bsky.social
A quick reminder that this thread is turning into the best overall place collating Kaleb's longer-form work; Jake's been steadily adding to it, with the latest entries just today. (And the tweets and the photography and the podcast and etc. are all out there too.)
September 30, 2025 at 9:58 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
sterlewine.bsky.social
A farewell to my friend, Kaleb Horton, a great writer who died unexpectedly this past weekend.
Kaleb Horton RIP
A farewell to my friend Kaleb Horton, a great writer who died unexpectedly this past weekend.
sterlewine.substack.com
September 29, 2025 at 8:35 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
nedraggett.bsky.social
I had to think for a long while how best to remember that remarkable writer and good soul, Kaleb Horton.

I have done what I could.

"An Absent Friend," via my Tumblr.
Post by @nedraggett · 1 image
💬 0  🔁 0  ❤️ 0 · An absent friend. · Friday, over on my Patreon, I published a piece that I knew I was going to have to write at some point, about Keith McIvor, more well known to the world as JD T…
www.tumblr.com
September 28, 2025 at 7:01 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
jonnegroni.bsky.social
Kaleb Horton was a great writer because he wrote like someone who genuinely talks to ghosts. His words were alive, raw with wonder and weariness. You could feel the road under his sentences down to the pavement.
September 28, 2025 at 1:07 AM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
liamhogan.id.au
Kaleb Horton wrote one of the most powerful things I’ve ever read about memory and nostalgia.

kalebhorton.ghost.io/memory-nosta...
Memory & Nostalgia
Nostalgia is a drug that eats memory. It kicks in right after you say the word remember, and when it works it starts flooding you with warm and pleasant lies. It’s insanely addictive. Works fast. Ever...
kalebhorton.ghost.io
September 27, 2025 at 11:48 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
passionweiss.bsky.social
RIP Kaleb Horton, one of the most dazzling, funny, kind, & truly original writers to ever grace this endangered medium.

I was lucky enough to edit him for the most popular piece we ever did theLAnd. A strange poultry odyssey of true brilliance. thelandmag.com/pioneer-frie...
The Rise and Fall of Pioneer Chicken, the Last Great L.A. Chicken Shack
There are two Pioneer Chickens left in Los Angeles: One in Boyle Heights and one in Bell Gardens. I made it my mission to see both.
thelandmag.com
September 27, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
nedraggett.bsky.social
And now I'm just spelunking around and here's this Facebook post by Kaleb Horton from September 2017. It was three months after MTV dumped its freelancers. I'm sure it would have been a piece there; instead he posted this on FB just to have it written out: Toys 'R' Us as societal microcosm.
Facebook post from Kaleb Horton, September 18, 2017: Toys R Us is probably going out of business this year. I'm fascinated by the collapse of retail, because what it really signifies is the collapse of the 20th century. The reason I pushed to profile guys like Harry Dean Stanton, Merle Haggard and Chuck Berry, was that writing about them is a way of writing about the 20th century, and how different it was from where we are now. How shockingly different, in retrospect. The migration out of the south, the descent of the Dust Bowl, which was a Biblical plague; the millions of people who were killed during World War Two. Monoculture, and the idea that a great episode of a television show would be seen by *half of all people.* The arrival of flight, and the end of horses. Homes without electricity. Coming of age without computers, without television. Listening to the radio for entertainment. The 20th century was a long time ago and it's a ghost now. It's a ghost you see in the places you wouldn't expect. It's seen in towns that were bypassed by the freeways, the dusty little towns out west that still have old diners and motels and payphones. It's seen in the places that we left, places where mines shut down, places where tourist attractions died off. It's seen in Bakersfield with Buck Owens' Crystal Palace and it's seen in Roswell, which stubbornly maintains the relics of the '90s UFO boom. Things like that won't be around forever. Someday owners will die and towns will burn and they won't be rebuilt. And it's difficult to suss out what those things are, because they're on roads, physical and metaphorical, that we no longer travel. The ghost sightings happen in stupid places, unexpected places, and uncool places. A few months ago, I went with Marie to the Toys R Us on Victory Blvd. in Burbank, which still looks exactly like it did in Back to the Future in 1985 somehow. It's not nostalgia that you see there, it's just a customer base and economic model that's aging and won't be around a lot longer, and it's *boring.* There's no reason for anyone to ever go to Lancer's, the little diner by that Toys R Us. Because it's not good. People go there out of tradition, and old habits. 80 and 90 year olds go there. We were lining up for a Nintendo, which is still a hard thing to keep stocked in stores. Toys R Us was actually the best place to obtain one, because it's no longer a place children beg their parents to take them to. When we went in, wham, there it was. The ghost of 1996. I was 8 years old, for a fraction of a second. The feeling wasn't nostalgia, it was a kind of temporal dislocation. A confusion. But it wasn't an immaculate 1996, it was a fading 1996. It was lonelier than I remember it. It's time for Toys R Us to go out of business. It was time ten years ago, fifteen. There are reasons to be nostalgic about the 20th century. We weren't plugged into so many wires, so many screens. We were a little bit closer to the process of manufacturing and agriculture than we are now. We made more things by hand, and our goals as people were uniquely audacious and driven by mad, desperate power that was temporary and had to end. But the 20th century was hopelessly cruel and soaked in blood. The 20th century gave us flight, but it also gave us bombs that can end the world and Richard Nixon and his evil sidekick Kissinger and it gave us new mutations of slavery and race and class subjugation and it gave us useless, disgusting monuments to Confederate slavers and traitors and cowards. It gave us President Trump, who wouldn't exist today without New York City's collective cocaine addiction in the 1980s. I want to find the ghosts, not because I miss the past -- the good old days can't return because they're imaginary and what you really miss is youth and if you're lucky a warm feeling of safety -- but because I don't even know what things we'll lose, or when we'll lose them, or how long we have to document them. I know ghosts when I see them. Toys R Us for the mundane side and the Salton Sea for the widescreen wasteland side. But I have absolutely no idea how many there are. I figure people go first, then places. Those are the things we have a limited time to physically document and historically examine and preserve on film. The ideas will go away much slower, and some of them may be eternal, like cold wars. But those are a lot less fun because you don't get to drive to them.
September 27, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
nedraggett.bsky.social
Some important info on Kaleb Horton and his writing for MTV: as I learned, he'd reupped the Merle piece on his site earlier this year, but otherwise his 2016-2017 work there was scrubbed and long unavailable. Happily, I was able to find a Wayback link with them all. Share, read, and remember.
News - Entertainment, Music, Movies, Celebrity
The ultimate news source for music, celebrity, entertainment, movies, and current events on the web. It's pop culture on steroids.
web.archive.org
September 27, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
jeremydlarson.bsky.social
Man, I remember hopping on the phone with Kaleb for this piece and thinking, "Oh you write almost exactly how you talk." He was so thoughtful & cared about his truth, his blue and funny vision of the world. Loved this piece, one of his many great accomplishments in life pitchfork.com/reviews/albu...
Johnny Cash: American Recordings
Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we explore Johnny Cash’s 1994 comeback American Recordings.
pitchfork.com
September 27, 2025 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
davidjroth.bsky.social
I always admired Kaleb Horton's writing so much and am terribly sorry to hear of his death. It's a long list of singular writers who didn't have the careers they should have because of the people, places, and things that killed online media, but his name is right at the very top. I hate all of it.
September 27, 2025 at 3:55 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
briceezell.bsky.social
My hometown of Bakersfield, CA is a strange place, and few understood it better than Kaleb Horton, a brilliant writer that I’m sad to hear died this week. RIP to a writer of tremendous talent, and a photographer with an eye for the Central Valley like no other. The world feels really fucked today.
September 27, 2025 at 12:39 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
bibliotequetress.bsky.social
Kaleb Horton wrote this perfect obituary of Shane MacGowan
www.gq.com/story/shane-...
Shane MacGowan Will Outlive All of Us
The Pogues frontman, punk trickster-god, and poet of the gutter died Thursday in Dublin, but the songs he wrote and sang have always transcended time.
www.gq.com
September 27, 2025 at 1:44 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
marieberd.bsky.social
my husband @kalebhorton.bsky.social hated the phrase “passed away” and had nothing but scorn for softening euphemisms in general. he was a firm believer in the comedy rule of threes, but only if the third thing can hit as a surprise. and he just died
September 27, 2025 at 11:44 AM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
nedraggett.bsky.social
This, I think, is what a lot of us are thinking. Also this: it's needed. It will not replace him. He should have been here for it.
tcote.bsky.social Thierry @tcote.bsky.social · Sep 27
It absolutely did—thanks again. And let’s agree that it’s a travesty that writing of this quality and still relatively ready requires almost archeological work—I hope that someone eventually puts together an anthology of Kaleb’s words & photos so this doesn’t get lost.
September 27, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
sallymcsurly.bsky.social
Gutted at the news that Kaleb Horton is gone. Kaleb was a brilliant writer, of course, but he was also a gifted photographer. Years ago I encouraged him to sell his pieces. His work was so good, I told him, and people should see it.

Here are some of his beautiful shots.
September 27, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
rickpaulas.bsky.social
Kaleb Horton was an incredible writer with each new piece appointment reading, but I personally was so inspired by his photography. I had an album of his photos saved on my phone that I’d use as inspiration when writing myself. I needed him to put out that book.
September 27, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
nedraggett.bsky.social
An important update.
From The Archives: Merle Haggard, Son of Bakersfield
Note: I wrote a bunch of stuff before posting the actual article. You know, like recipe sites, except I heard some of those guys make money. So just scroll down a thousand words for the actual thing y...
kalebhorton.ghost.io
September 27, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
nedraggett.bsky.social
One of the best pieces by Kaleb Horton ever is no longer easily available, because of course MTV wouldn't maintain actual good music writing done for its site once. Thankfully I found it again via some digging: his 2016 memorial to Merle Haggard on his passing. Link here, screencaps to follow.
Merle Haggard, Son Of Bakersfield
Kaleb Horton reflects on the passing of his hometown hero
web.archive.org
September 27, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
sotoalfred.bsky.social
Count me among the hundreds of people who wish they could've met @kalebhorton.bsky.social and among the hundreds who want to keep writing as vivid as his alive. This piece, for example, about George Harrison and Formula 1 racing. www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...
George Harrison's Quiet Love Affair With Formula One
Just another guy at the track, the Beatle could shed fame and just be himself.
www.rollingstone.com
September 27, 2025 at 2:32 PM
Reposted by Ryan Gibbs
bicycleidiot.bsky.social
RIP Kaleb Horton
kalebhorton.ghost.io/2025-so-far/
I also have advice. Everybody loves reading advice on the computer, so I'll share it: the best thing you can do right now is log off as hard as you can. Go outside, talk to people in real life where it's actually kind of rude to talk about the news, try to actually see the friends you usually just text message. Go for a long drive and turn the phone off while you do it. Get back into your hobbies or pick one and learn it for a while. Watch one of those studio movies that reviews called "wildly miscalculated" and you haven't seen since high school. Play an album you like but find embarrassing. Go to free community events even if they sound stupid. If you take the freeway, try the surface streets. Go to a bad diner and just order some bad coffee because even bad coffee is good coffee. You can't help anybody when you're exhausted and keep posting one million college-educated rewordings of "I would love to be dead right now" on the computer. Walk away from the thing and try out some of those normal things you hear about and if you get bored that's wonderful because we're not supposed to get bored anymore. It turns out boredom is the Cadillac of feelings.
September 27, 2025 at 1:01 PM
ryangibbs.bsky.social
Back here briefly to say that @kalebhorton.bsky.social was a truly incredible writer and photographer, and one of the funniest posters over on the last place, and I'm absolutely stunned to hear that he's died.
September 27, 2025 at 2:53 PM