By Emily C.
Starting in the late 1980s, Frank Tovey (also known as Fad Gadget, whose music and general adventures were chronicled in a past Popshifter article) departed from avant-garde synth-pop, and started making Irish folk records.
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By Emily C.
The Ritz, Ybor City (Tampa) FL
September 29, 2009
When I discovered that the Happy Mondays were coming to town (shortly after the Gogol Bordello War of 2009), I was beyond psyched. I was a massive fan of this band in the early 1990s. While my fellow middle-school-aged peers in Florida were jamming along to the sounds of Stevie B. and Taylor Dayne, my musical world was fully entrenched in “Madchester”—with bands like the Stone Roses, the Inspiral Carpets, and of course, the Mondays. So one can imagine my excitement as I commuted an hour away from my apartment in St. Petersburg, Florida, to see the band; I even momentarily forgot that the Psychedelic Furs were also on the bill that evening.
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By Jemiah Jefferson
Jude Law, tasty son-of-a-bitch.
Originally this was going to be a gushing review of a very beautiful, very sexy vampire film that I remember loving the hell out of, but hadn’t seen in a very long time—ten years or so. Within 30 minutes of rewatching, though, this became much more of an exercise in “the golden glow of memory masking the flaws of fact.” Filmmaking, vampire movies, and I were all in somewhat different eras in 1999; we’ve all come a long way, and The Wisdom Of Crocodiles hasn’t really kept up. Unjustly obscure, the film also suffers from having been titled Immortality for its US release, and the shitty production values used when slapping its American title on the screen makes it look like it’s just a very expensive episode of the new Outer Limits.
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By Less Lee Moore
[This piece was originally published in Smack Dab Fanzine #4, September 1995. With the exception of typos I may have corrected, all of the original text and formatting remain the same. I have also scanned the original artwork.—Ed.]
Everyone whether they like it or not, remembers Rick Springfield. After all, he was a teen idol: musician, soap opera heartthrob and movie star.
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By Less Lee Moore
[This piece was originally published in Smack Dab Fanzine #5, April 1996. With the exception of typos I may have corrected, all of the original text and formatting remain the same. I have also scanned the original artwork.—Ed.]
The first pop star I had a crush on was Barry Manilow. Looks aside, I was dazzled by his rhinestone-studded costumes and silly medleys. I cherished my monthly fan club letters for years until I turned on MTV in 1981. Then I discovered New Wave and the weirdest, most endearing brothers next to Jeff and Steve McDonald. Neil and Tim Finn from Split Enz.
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By Less Lee Moore
Read Part One of this article here.
This year, I got a copy of Nirvana, a book by music journalist Everett True. Although I own Come As You Are by Michael Azerrad, I’ve never even read it. So to be fair, I read Azerrad’s book first.
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By Michael Row
There was once a band from Hawthorne, California called REDD KROSS. Ever hear of them?? They were this wildly fun & funny punk/pop/rock group who dug CHEAP TRICK a heck of a lot. And they liked to get dressed up. Oh man, did they ever.
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By Less Lee Moore
When others become misty-eyed with nineties nostalgia, I never know what to say. I’ve often felt like my memories of the decade are far removed from theirs. Although I liked some of the so-called “grunge” music, I resented the media co-opting of the word in an attempt to cash in on youth culture. It’s only recently that I started to feel like I may have been more attuned to the zeitgeist than I realized.
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By Nicole V.
“People are always saying you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster. Like you know what it is even. But every so often I’ll have, like, a moment, where just being myself in my life right where I am is, like, enough.”
Angela Chase, Episode 13 of My So-Called Life
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