// Category Archive for: Issues

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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1988: Perk Up Your Ears

By Latanya

I was only seven in 1983, so I wasn’t as musically aware as I was in 1988. Granted, by 1988 I was 12 and in the seventh grade, and I was much more expressive by this point. Thankfully, my ears were perked up higher so the following albums stuck out
from that year.
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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 Carney

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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Creating Utopia: An Interview With Jason Falkner

Interviewed by Less Lee Moore

If I’ve ever made a mix CD for you, chances are, there’s been a Jason Falkner song on it. Whenever I’m asked to list my favorite musicians, he’s always included. But when it comes to the question of, “what does he sound like?” I am stumped. He sounds like. . . well, he sounds like Jason Falkner. When you hear his work, you just know it’s him. Then he has to go and outdo himself by writing his own songs, performing all the instruments himself, singing lead and background vocals, and producing and engineering everything.

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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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Nonconsensual Fandom

By Jessica Melusine

Even in this age where the geeks seem to rule the earth, where pop culture analysis has jumped out of its academic setting to blogs and Wikipedia, where suddenly everyone now gets a red shirt joke, there are taste police. Even in a culture that is supposed to be tolerant there are issues about how one is supposed to watch, consume, or behave in fan culture.

I call this trend Nonconsensual Fandom.
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The Minutemen, Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat

By Jimmy Ether

It’s difficult for me to fully express the effect that the Minutemen had on me. “Life changing” may seem over-dramatic, but it would not be inaccurate. They were the ultimate underground band. A perfect blend of outrage, respect, art, sweat, and brotherly love. They never fit the hardcore genre into which they have been historically placed. They were not about aggression, rebellion, and noise. They were blatant self-expression and open-mindedness. They projected a very conceptualized vision of what a free, musical lifestyle meant. . . zen and the art of “the spiel.” They dabbled in self-mythology while remaining entirely modest everymen from blue-collar San Pedro, California.

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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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