Chewing Bubblegum and Kicking Ass: An Interview With The Bicycles

Interviewed by Less Lee Moore

I saw The Bicycles play on my first trip to Toronto, in 2002. Impressed, I waited for news of a CD release. And waited and waited, along with the rest of their fans.

2006’s The Good, The Bad, and The Cuddly was truly worth waiting for. It’s full of sweet—yet cheeky—infectious pop. After all, when a band wears matching T-shirts sporting the letter B, one could expect nothing less.
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A Summer Music Cocktail

Mixed and stirred by John Lane

1. Percy Faith Orchestra, “Theme From A Summer Place”
Wait, stop, don’t run away while I’m writing to you! Does it sound vaguely like the music the patients would listen to in “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” after being given their meds? OK, yes, a little bit. But the pizzicato strings and the lush sweep of violins make this a classic nonetheless. Good welcoming tune as the party begins.
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Top Five Most Unexpected Summer Songs

By Emily C.

I grew up in South Florida, where summer was obviously guaranteed to be oppressively hot and sticky. The worst part about being in Florida is how people assume you were probably growing up by the beachside, chilling out, getting tan, and doing something constructive and athletic. I was usually found doing embarrassing things like writing awful “confessional” poetry, reading books that were way over my head, and working on my paleness, when I should have been out, say, making friends. Another diversion was—of course—listening to a lot of Goth, indie, and shoegazer “hits” of the 1990s and before. Because of that, the following songs have sounds I will always associate with summertime.
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My Summer Songs: Live Grateful Dead

By Christian Lipski

Summer has come in, loud sing cuckoo.
MS Harley 978, British Library

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Van Halen: Imps of Summer

By Jimmy Ether

Ever notice how some bands seem timeless while others are permanently affixed to a particular period of time in your life? Van Halen is definitely the latter for me. They epitomize adolescence—especially the testosterone-laced variety of adolescence. They were largely the soundtrack to my pre-teen and early teen years, and while they are indelibly connected to my own coming of age, they are even more associated in my mind with summer. It doesn’t matter what time of year you are listening to a Van Halen album. It feels like summer. Heat and humidity radiate from the speakers making you crave cold beer and swimming pools.

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Summer Music Shorts

By Lisa Haviland
I still get a buzz every time I hear the opening hiss of “Ahhh, push it,” and here I am livin’ in Salt ‘n Pepa’s borough of Queens, New York, twenty years after “Push It” rode the Top 40. Though the track came out in December of 1987, I still associate it with summer; it’s too raucous ‘n wild for winter or the indoors. A friend and I blasted it around the neighborhood during the summer of ‘88, far from the parents, though there was the inevitable awkward question from her younger brother as to the song’s meaning: “Ah, they mean push the shopping cart,” an item we happened to have commandeered and also the closest we’d come to pushing “it” at our delicate young ages.
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Summer in the City: Clothing Optional

By Katrina Armstrong

Some of us live in downtown Toronto and work hard. We work in industries where we don’t really have a chance to get away during the summer For example, at my company summer is the busiest time of year and no one is allowed to take vacation time between May and September. As a result, we feel trapped and stuck in a busy urban center. Well, not anymore. Just a seven-minute ferry ride away from downtown is the Toronto Island. Best known for Centreville, a children’s amusement park; Ward’s Island, a contentious area where people live; and the ever (un)popular Toronto Island Airport, Toronto Island harbors something spectacular, relaxing, and even a little sexy: Hanlan’s Point Clothing Optional Beach.
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My Top Five Summer Movies

By Christian Lipski

I was going to do my top five summer camp movies, but as I looked back through history, it seems that summer camp movies are, as a rule, not very good. So with the kind permission of my editor I expanded to include summer movies in general. These are the films that make me feel cool in the desiccating heat of the Pacific Northwest, the ones full of the possibilities of summer.
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