// Category Archive for: Issues

Bonnie and Clyde: “You Made Me Somebody They’re Gonna Remember”

By Less Lee Moore

“Why? What’s you mean, ‘Why?’ Because you’re different, that’s why. You know, you’re like me. You want different things. You got somethin’ better than bein’ a waitress. You and me travelin’ together, we could cut a path clean across this state and Kansas and Missouri and Oklahoma and everybody’d know about it. You listen to me, Miss Bonnie Parker. You listen to me.”
—Bonnie and Clyde, 1967

Screencaps from The Thought Experiment

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The King and (F.B.)I: Elvis Found Alive

By Christian Lipski

Elvis Presley is alive and well and living in Simi Valley. Or at least that’s the claim of Elvis Found Alive, a new faux-documentary from Highway 61 Entertainment, who brought you Paul McCartney Is Really Dead: The Last Testament of George Harrison (reviewed here). This time around, they’re doing a complete 180, revealing a conspiracy to fake a death instead of a life.

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The Beatles vs. Jesus

By Ayan Farah

It’s pretty hard to evade controversy when you’re in the most popular rock and roll band in the history of the world. Especially when you’re its most outspoken member. That band is, of course, The Beatles, and the aforementioned extrovert is none other than John Lennon.
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Prince’s Dirty Mind

By Paul Casey

Those who are only familiar with Prince as a traveling hits tour; one who thinks that Biblical coincidence—hello! 3121 perfume—is a guarantee of good business; and who makes deranged cultish put-downs of homosexuality and his old friends may not be aware that he was once something else. Some omni-sexual thing that was an expert in transgressive pop music and performance. Some deviant, perverted thing that ejaculated guitar semen onto his audience. Some ballsy twentysomething who wore black underwear and a trench coat to a Stones concert. Some kind of genius.

Photo © Blonde Peterson

From 1978’s “Soft and Wet,” the only sign of Prince’s genius on his debut For You, sex was the thing. Indeed, even now a decade following the misunderstood Jehovah’s Witness tribute The Rainbow Children, sex is still the thing. While most casual fans of Prince are aware of the mention of used Trojan condoms in “Little Red Corvette”—a song and line which is still performed today—or what “Cream” refers to (also still performed), there is a depth of perversion in his music which passes many by.

Prince’s sexual creativity touches areas which make even his longtime fans uncomfortable, including rape, incest, and turning lesbians straight. It has also turned out some of his greatest songs. This is an introduction to and celebration of that work.

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More Unspeakable Confessions of Zodiac Mindwarp

By Emily Carney

If you’re interested in the twee, unchallenging sounds of Arcade Fire and Belle and Sebastian, you may want to stop reading this article now.

The story of Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction really starts with Mark Manning, who was a graphic designer working for the UK music magazine Flexipop in the mid-1980s. Manning can best be described as looking like Ché Guevara if Ché decided to wear bandannas, Ray Bans, and join the Hell’s Angels. His look was all about leather, spandex, sunglasses, goatees, and long, dyed-black, heavy metal locks.
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Bringin’ the Crazy, Part II: In Which John Cale Beheaded a Chicken

By Emily Carney

It’s no secret that John Cale may have had some slight mental health issues during the mid-1970s. During this period in his esteemed career, Cale was suffering from a nasty cocaine and alcohol addiction. In 1975, he went through a particularly acrimonious divorce from his second wife, ex-GTO Cindy Wells, who infamously slept with dopey ex-Soft Machine singer Kevin Ayers during their tumultuous-at-best marriage.
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Except Rap And Country

By Lisa Anderson

Johnny Cash

“Oh, I like all kinds of music, except rap and country.”

How many times have you heard someone say this? If your life is like mine, you’ve heard it a lot. This will usually be said during small talk, by someone you’ve just met at a party or other gathering, or on a first date. I’ve heard it so often that I’m sure I’ve said it myself. In the last few years though, I’ve realized that it’s not true for me. Now I no longer say it, and I get annoyed when I hear it.
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Suffering, Defeat, and Justice: Why You Should Care About Pro Wrestling

By Paul Casey

Professional wrestling reached the high water mark of its popular and critical acceptance in the late 1990s. Since then, the Internet has bypassed the crude elitism of the dirt sheets and allowed fans the world over to step inside the shoes of a failed sports journalist with a disregard for both style and skill. When Vince McMahon admitted the pre-arranged nature of professional wrestling, he hit upon a unique way to market his World Wrestling Federation. “Sports Entertainment” is an athletic display, a “male” soap opera, a comedy showcase, and supposedly has more in common with Saturday Night Live than it does with Greg “the Hammer” Valentine vs. Roddy Piper in a Dog Collar Match.

Lou Albano, Cyndi Lauper

This was probably true in the 1980s, when Cyndi Lauper was palling around with Lou Albano and Mr. T was teaming with Hulk Hogan. It was probably true in the late ‘90s when The Rock and Steve Austin were at the top of their game. We’re a living cartoon. We’re real life super heroes. We’re a magic show. The successful marketing term of “Sports Entertainment” was an obvious, calculated attempt to redefine a business which had fallen between the cracks of popular culture. “Do they really expect us to believe this is real?” Although people can appreciate the commitment of magicians such as Penn & Teller and David Blaine in maintaining the illusion, the confusion over what wrestling actually is led to a long period where the public liked to believe that they were simply too sharp to be fooled.

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Your Pretty Face Is Going To Sell: Iggy Pop’s Marketing K.O.

By Cait Brennan

In the twenty-first century, commercial endorsements are everywhere. For the right price, for the right product, every indie band would wrestle an angry bear for the chance to front an ad campaign, disregarding what was once the cardinal rule of rock and roll: Doing commercials isn’t cool. Even Hollywood stars know it, which is why in the pre-YouTube era, big shot showbiz weasels would don “Fargo North, Decoder” trench coats, phony accents, and Archie McPhee mustaches and skulk off to Thailand to bank a cool million for appearing in a 30-second carbonated hemorrhoid cream ad, knowing it would never see the light of day on American TV.
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I Hate You Like Family: Sibling Rivalry In Pop Culture

By Aila Slisco

When the often-quoted W.C. Fields famously said “never work with children or animals,” he might have done well to add “or siblings.” Anyone with a sibling knows that there is an often thin line between love and hate when it comes to relations between brothers and sisters. Sibling rivalry has probably been around as long as siblings have, although it rarely reaches the Biblical proportions of Cain murdering Abel. When it happens in pop culture, even comparatively mild disagreements are amplified and the drama is put on display for all to see.
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