Month: June 2002

It was a surprisingly radical idea in 1996 to stage a full-scale Broadway musical that infused show tunes with rock and R&B, and at the same time dealt head-on with AIDS, drug addiction, and homelessness. It’s safe to say that the risk paid off. Jonathan Larson’s high-spirited, gritty look at life among New York’s young…

Ha, the stoic folks at the Swedish Institute are hipper than you think. We take the name of this fete to indicate that Gen-Xers are finally embracing something as square and unironic as their own ethnic heritage, and it’s about time. We’ve decided that ethnic pride among those of us of Northern European descent is…

In these distracted times, kids are frequently more adept than their parents at video games, VCRs, and all manner of batteries-not-included-some-assembly-required. But there’s still plenty of room for real magic and wonder. There’s no better place to experience that simple childish joy than the Minnesota Zoo’s butterfly garden, now open through Labor Day. In a…

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that we take a little time each issue to bang on about The Next Big Thing in music. Well forget everything we said before. If you want to know what the future of rock music is, do this: Take all the wasted potential of Beck, Air, Radiohead, and…

When most bands come out with a record this strong 25 years into their career, it’s a surprising comeback. For Los Lobos, it’s just the new album. The experimentalism heard on recent Lobos discs and side projects like the Latin Playboys is toned down here in favor of thick slabs of crunchy Latin rock, rife…

After eight years of relative silence since the fairly blah Us, Peter Gabriel’s finally cranked up the steam and put some music out. Besides the new studio album, Up (due out in a few months) and a set of remastered re-releases of a dozen-odd of his older stuff, Gabriel’s also dipped back into soundtrack work…