By Sandy
While filling out my answers to one of the Facebook memes (I know, I know), I was forced to admit the ultimate truth about myself: I am a weirdo. Maybe I could just say that I’m very picky, but when my fiancé Chris is yelling at me for rinsing a dish that’s already clean, is that “very picky bordering on levels of weirdness?”
Continue reading ‘That Cupboard Smell’
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.
Continue reading ‘She Put A Record On: An Interview With Gudrun Gut’
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.”
Continue reading ‘Oren Lavie, The Opposite Side of the Sea ‘
By Noreen Sobczyk
Certain sensory things trigger memories instantly. At one time or another each of us has probably heard a song play and been immediately transported through time to some place or person from their past without any conscious effort. Well, scents can do the same thing. Maybe it’s that pot roast and gravy that smells just like the one your Grandma made that gets you feeling all warm and nostalgic? Or mulled cider that reminds you of Halloween? Or maybe it’s something that smells like the Love’s Baby Soft worn by the bitchy popular girl who tortured you at the sleep over? Or the smell of a boys junior high locker room’s socks n’jocks and you think about being laughed at for not being able to climb the rope in gym class? Everyone must have some smell that is unique to themselves and their own past memories, but we must share some in our collective memory banks. Take a look at the list below and see if anything rings a bell.
Continue reading ‘How Long Until We Have Smell-O-Vision?’
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.
Continue reading ‘What’s Inside a (Super Fan) Girl?’
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.
Continue reading ‘John Lee Hooker, Anthology 50 Years‘
By Christian Lipski
There comes a time in every band’s life when they release the album that represents their commercial and/or critical peak. And then there are the albums that come out after that. Perhaps on their own, the later albums would be popular and appreciated in their own right, but when compared to the more well-known works, they tend to fall short in most fans’ minds. They get passed up in retrospectives if not mocked outright, and they’re rarely on the list to be re-released. But there’s always something to love about them, especially if you bought them new.
Continue reading ‘Albums In Decline: T.Rex, Iggy Pop, The Ramones’
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.
Continue reading ‘Fear Is A Woman’s Best Friend: Q & A with Deerfrance’
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.
Continue reading ‘Top Ten Concerts’
By Emily Carney
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).
Continue reading ‘Für Immer: Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft and Neue Deutsche Welle’