The Gonzo Tapes: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

By Lisa Haviland

“For me, it was the first time I’d ever even heard an artillery shell fired and when they come in and hit, it’s a, ah, unnerving experience. . . When you’re out in a jeep that continually backfires and boils over and stops by the side of the road in the midst of voluntary convoys and hoards of refugees, yeah, you tend to think that maybe the world is about to come to an end.”

(more…)

New Orleans Is Halloween

By Lisa Haviland

The first time I drove my new-resident ass down Pine Street in 2000, dodgin’ craters, I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell I’d done, even as I knew I belonged in this witchy, subtropic gingerbreadland. Halloween is much better as an ethos, a lifestyle, than a holiday whose significance ebbs with age, and Halloween had manifested in the form of this secret city. Constraints didn’t exist in New Orleans the way they did elsewhere—to where they swallowed you, to where people somberly did their day-to-day and duty trumped joy after all. The thick air vibrated me right out of regular America’s orbit.
(more…)

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.
(more…)

Those Old Melodies: Songs Rediscovered

Intro by Less Lee Moore

Recently I was listening to The Vines’ Highly Evolved album again. My history with this album is intriguing, and proves my theory that some music needs to be fully digested before you can appreciate it.
(more…)

Lusting After The Raveonettes: Q & A with Sune Rose Wagner

Interviewed by Lisa Haviland (via email)
Text by Less Lee Moore

If you thought you had The Raveonettes pegged as just another Jesus and Mary Chain ripoff, their new album Lust Lust Lust (Vice Records) may change your mind.
(more…)

Top Five Thrift Store Finds

By Lisa Haviland

Mrs. Lou Reed
Sunglasses from Buffalo Exchange, Brooklyn, NY; 2007

The Commack Flea Market was a teenage thrift-store-junkie’s dream: rows upon rows of inexpensive mini-stores—more like clothing bodegas than actual stores—in a multi-level arena five minutes from my parents’ house. It was in the confines of this Long Island mall-reprieve maze that I learned to dig through the chintz and hone in on second-hand gold.
(more…)

Top Ten Lists of 2007

The staff at Popshifter share the lists of the Top Ten Things that kicked our asses this year.
(more…)

Q & A with Bedtime for Toys

Interviewed by Lisa Haviland (via email)

Close your eyes; beddy bye, tin soldier.
Mommy says that it’s time for sleep.
If my folks were wiser and older,
They’d know kids and toys don’t need sleep.

Don’t be bad little cotton dolly.
See how nice Mickey Mouse sleeps now?
Even my brass drummer boy has stopped all his noise,
‘Cause he knows it’s past bedtime for toys.
Stevie Wonder, “Bedtime for Toys”

(more…)