From Guided By Voices to Nada Surf, if you can think of a seminal indie rock band from the past 20 years, there's a pretty decent chance Doug Gillard's put in time among their ranks at some point or other. The journeyman guitar player also has a accomplished solo career, with his latest, Parade On, due out in a few weeks. Fittingly, the song's every bit as diverse as one would expect from an artist with a seemingly endless parade of projects. Gillard joins us over some green tea and bourbon to discuss the Beatles, Ohio and playing with some of the best rock and roll bands going.

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Come spend 45 minutes in the Red Hook living room shared by Hospitality's singer and percussionist a day after the launch of their sophomore record. The expectations are elevated this time out, after the healthy amount of buzz generated by the band's self-titled indie-pop debut. You wouldn't know it from outward appearances, however. All is calm in the Brooklyn band's apartment. Dinner is on the stove and Michel is halfway through Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. The tour, after all, is still a few months away.

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Colin Spoelman quite literally wrote the book on home whiskey distillation. Is a subject he knows a thing or two about, having transformed the output of a single internet-purchased pot still into a major microdistillery -- New York City's longest running, no less, at the ripe old age of four. It's a terrific book -- though it did firmly crush any fantasies I had of running my own apartment-based distillery. Thankfully, however, there are more terrific whiskies in the world than ever before, thanks to a recent explosion in craft distilleries. The list certainly include Spoelman's King's County, maker of some fine bourbon and the smoothest moonshine I've ever tasted.

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Over the past 30 years, Rodney Anonymous has become a sort of Philadelphia landmark like Ben Franklin's house or that big cracked bell. If you get a chance to visit him during your time in the city, it's the sort of thing you won't soon forget. I met the once and future Dead Milkmen frontman at Philly's top goth/industry record store, at which point we adjourned to a nearby tea shop, so at not to interrupt the employee's Magic: The Gathering tournament in the rear of the store. Three decades after forming punk's most hilarious band, Anonymous hasn't slowed down (save for the occasional slipped-disc of old age), nor have his opinions dulled a bit.

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When the next generation finds itself knee-deep in an occult revival, who better to call that Jason Louv. My two-time former roommate swung by New York City a while back to teach the kids in Bushwick a thing or two about magic. Louv has written a number books on the subject, including 2005's Generation Hex for Disinfo. His most recent volume explores his newfound fascination with the genetically modified organisms of Monsanto.

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Strange to think, more than twenty years after Maus became the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer, the concept of comics as academic pursuit still seems a foreign one. Standing in front of Columbia's impressive collection of bound sequential art, however, the day when comics are widely regarded as some of the finest literature and art available doesn't seem too far off after all. When Karen Green started work at the university, Columbia's comics collection was a scant three titles. Now it's an impressive thing to behold.

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Join The Onion's former Features Editor and current Adult Swim employee for a frank discussion about buying Firehose records on eBay after a dream told him to do so.

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Every show can't be a skafest -- unless, of course, you're Dan Potthast. We swung by the MU330 frontman's Santa Cruz apartment, and happened to catch Skankin Pickle / Chinkees singer Mike "Bruce Lee" Park. That means you get two third-wave ska legends for the price of one.

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David Cope is a professor emeritus at the University of California and a pioneer in the world of computer created music, having worked to perfect classical compositions on machines since the days of punch cards. He's also exactly the sort of person you'd like to sit down with for an hour to discuss the rules governing music, math, art and the universe.

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The Boing Boing / Make Magazine / Cool Tools editor and I found the quietest corner we could at the recent Engadget Expand event in New York to discuss the importance of curation in the digital age, the lost art of print media, podcasting and the magic of Art Bell.

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