// Category Archive for: Music

The Cramps, Smell Of Female

By Christian Lipski

“Ladies and Gentlemen, live from the Peppermint Lounge, The Cramps”
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I’d Just As Soon Stay Sick: A Tribute To Lux Interior and The Cramps

By Millie De Chirico

As a kid growing up on the outskirts of Atlanta, GA, our family had a real love/hate relationship with cable television. My parents would fluctuate between not being able to live without cable and deeming it a waste of money. Even worse: our family did not have cable when I was in middle school, which was the age where I began to really get into music, wanting to watch MTV and Night Flight constantly. It was a pretty soul shattering time, to say the least.
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Do It Again: Cover Versions Which Should Happen

By Emily Carney

5. Billy Joel’s “Big Shot,” performed by Ben Folds

Billy Joel

I have the most beautiful older sister. She related to me that when she was in high school during the 1980s, many famous pop solo artists tended to be older people, like Elton John or Billy Joel. She told me the most hilarious story about a bunch of teenage girls in her gym class shrieking over seeing Billy Joel in concert. I find it hard to believe any teenage girl would get physically excited over seeing Billy Joel live in concert. . . but hey, we all have different tastes.
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Disliking Influence: Q & A with Robert Görl of DAF

Interviewed by Emily Carney

DAF, 1980
From Verschwende deine Jugend

In the late 1970s, post-punk music in Düsseldorf, Germany began to mutate into sounds which were original, energetic, and exciting. Fired up by the music coming from England (and somewhat inspired by more electronic sounds, like Düsseldorf’s own Kraftwerk), one band called Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft (DAF) began to synthesize a sound which wasn’t quite rock, wasn’t quite disco, but was innovative and unusual enough to earn them the future sobriquet as the “fathers of EBM” (electronic body music). DAF were the central figures in the musical Neue Deutsche Welle movement (German New Wave, or simply abbreviated as NDW).
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She Put A Record On: An Interview With Gudrun Gut

Interviewed by Julie Finley

Gudrun Gut isn’t a household name (not in North America, anyway). You’re not going to hear her on any Top 40 radio stations, but you might hear her whilst shopping in those bath and body stores called The Body Shop (true story, I actually heard a song of hers whilst shopping in there). However, her level of North American obscurity doesn’t make her any less important.
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Oren Lavie, The Opposite Side of the Sea

By Chelsea Spear

In the early days of 2009, the Internet became aware of Oren Lavie. The video for “Her Morning Elegance,” the album’s opening track and first single, was auspiciously posted on YouTube, and was subsequently linked on individual blogs and websites (like the group blog MetaFilter.com) with great enthusiasm. As Lavie’s catchy melody burbled along, a narrative of dreams and unrequited love unfolded in appropriately elegant, yet painstaking stop-motion animation. The album’s sales figures at online retailers increased faster than you can say, “YouTube embed.”
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What’s Inside a (Super Fan) Girl?

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.
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John Lee Hooker, Anthology 50 Years

By J Howell

What can be said about John Lee Hooker that hasn’t been said at least a thousand times before? If you’re somehow unfamiliar with Hooker’s well-deserved “Blues Legend” status, this two-disc compilation isn’t a bad place to start. Hooker was notoriously prolific, recording multiple versions of songs over the years, sometimes under assumed names (but usually laughably close, such as “John Lee Booker”) to avoid contractual snags. Because of Hooker’s prodigious output on so many labels over so many years, assembling a perfect career summary set—especially on just two discs—would be nearly impossible. That said, Anthology 50 Years does a more than adequate, if not-quite-stellar, job of offering an overview of John Lee Hooker’s idiosyncratic style.
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Fear Is A Woman’s Best Friend: Q & A with Deerfrance

Interviewed by Emily Carney

Deerfrance is best known as John Cale’s backup vocalist from 1978 to 1981. However, she is also notable for her own inspired excursions into music, and has been pursuing a brilliant solo career as of late with Extra Virgin Mary.
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Top Ten Concerts

By Christian Lipski

I’ve been to a few live shows in my life, starting with the Beach Boys in 1983, and there’s nothing like seeing your favorite band doing what they love and giving them that immediate feedback. Recently I was asked what my ten favorite concerts were, and surprisingly that’s not something I’d ever done. It made me look back at all the great live moments I’ve experienced, and that was worth the trip alone. Here’s what I came back with, in no particular order.
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