Cockney Rhyming Slang Is À La Mode

Published on November 29th, 2009 in: Culture Shock, Issues, OMG British R Coming |

By Margaret Cross

Being a huge fan of Brit flicks, the BBC, Brit writing, and of course, Brit gangsters, I have been in the thrall of so-called “Cockney Rhyming Slang” for close to two decades now. I’ve been an avid student, doing my best to understand the riddle that is rhyming slang. Here, for you Popshifters, I break it down in the easiest way I am able. These are some clever Brits!
(more…)

What’s Inside a (Super Fan) Girl?

Published on March 30th, 2009 in: He Had Good Taste, Issues, Music |

By Margaret Cross

The first time I heard The Cramps, I was a 13-year-old kid living in a very suburban suburb of Cincinnati. It was the summer of 1985, and a friend’s college-age brother played us his cassette tape of Bad Music for Bad People. I made him play it twice more, before he asked me to just go ahead and dub it, already! I did, and spent hours and hours listening to it, and being inexorably pulled into this land of beautifully distorted guitars, a drum beat that would drive a sane person to their knees, and the truly gleeful, terrifying, hopped-up vocals of Lux Interior.

I now believe that some of us are just born Cramped, and that’s how it is. But I’ll take you a journey so you’ll understand what I mean.
(more…)