// Category Archive for: Issues

Licorice Pizza: My History With Vinyl

By Jesse Roth

It was an otherwise forgettable commercial for some product or service that was of no use to a middle school kid like me. Airing several times during evening broadcasts in the mid-1990s, it featured several scenes of children around my age with a voiceover expounding on the values and traits of this new generation—the one later to be known by the rather uninspired label “Generation Y.” One scene in particular showed a young girl leaning against the window on a school bus listening to a Walkman. The image was rather innocent but was coupled with the following line:

“They’ve never owned a record”
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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.”

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Dark City Is Overrated

By Chelsea Spear

In 1998, Alex Proyas’s Dark City saw a quiet theatrical release, and an even quieter end to its engagement. In the years since it was dismissed and disinterred to home video, filmmaker Joss Whedon and Roger Ebert, dean of American film critics, have found inspiration in the expressionistic, dystopian feature. Andy Herod of acclaimed indie band The Comas cited the film as “the only movie that makes sense or matters.” It has become a fetish object for slavering fanboys and Ebert acolytes. A decade later, it has all but been inducted into the neo-noir cannon. Ebert has recorded a commentary track for the deluxe edition DVD. Fans discuss the news of a sequel in hushed, reverent tones.

It is quite possibly the most overrated film of the 1990s.
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Adam Ant, Strip

By Less Lee Moore

In 1983, having just experienced Adam Ant performing live to support Friend Or Foe (my very first concert!), I was a certified fan. I loved the videos for “Strip” and “Puss’n Boots” and was psyched for the upcoming Strip album.
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Jay Reatard, Matador Singles ’08

By Less Lee Moore

After seeing Jay Reatard’s name pop up all over The Big Takeover blog last year I grew curious. Then I saw he was also profiled in Spin a few times and I became suspicious. Was this more of the typical music press hype and hysteria?
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Ten Songs That Made Your Parents Want To Kill Themselves

By Jim R. Clark

The title here is pretty self-explanatory. Maybe you just broke up with the love of your life and you just want to while away a few minutes wallowing in self-pity? Well, why should your parents have all the fun, eh? Let’s take this depressing journey into musical history together. Join me. If you dare.
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The Bicycles, Oh No, It’s Love

By Less Lee Moore

The Bicycles are a Toronto-based band, but one for whom the word “band” seems terribly limiting. Their live shows traditionally feature not only the four core members—Matt Beckett, Andrew Scott, Drew Smith, and Dana Snell—but also members of several other local bands and musicians such as Henri Fabergé and the Adorables, Laura Barrett, and many others.

Oh No, It’s Love, reflects the collaborations of this collective of musicians but also retains the signature sound the band established on their first album The Good, The Bad, and The Cuddly: captivating pop with ironic lyrics.

Yet Oh No, It’s Love is far more ambitious and fully-fledged than the band’s first album, and not just because it features more than twenty contributors (in addition to the four “official” band members) and a vast array of instruments, from harp and harmonica to kalimba and pedal steel. Although there are many current bands who also use less traditionally rock & roll instruments, many of them are utterly boring and passionless. The Bicycles are the complete opposite.
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Roger Joseph Manning, Jr., Catnip Dynamite

By Less Lee Moore

It’s difficult to be objective in an album review when your gut feeling tells you that the musician in question is an all-around righteous guy. Fortunately, Roger Joseph Manning, Jr.’s latest album, Catnip Dynamite, is so amazing that I won’t have to compromise my principles; this review will be completely guilt-free.
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There’s A First Time For Everything: David Bowie, Stryper, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Robyn Hitchcock

By Christian Lipski

Beginnings are a very delicate time. No matter how rabid or deep your fandom may be now, at some point there was a first experience, an introduction at a time when you weren’t sure that you were going to like whatever it was. If you do end up loving that artist, the first work always holds a special place in your heart, even if it’s not the “best” effort from that artist. I think it’s interesting to know how a fan was introduced to the object of his or her obsession, to see the foundation of a lifelong love. Interesting, too, to see the introduction to a failed obsession, when that first work didn’t blossom into more, but still remains important. Here is a selection of albums that were my first from the artists, some of which became the first in a long line of acquisitions, and some which did not.
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Origin of Similarity: Why Muse Is Not Radiohead

By Christian Lipski

Son House’s style was ripped off by Robert Johnson.

Pearl Jam is a cheap copy of Stone Temple Pilots.

Can you claim that two contemporary artists with similar influences and styles could not possibly have developed these techniques separately? You can if you’re a music writer:
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