Month: December 2003

Reports are sunny regarding David Bowie’s newest album, Reality. It’s a good thing. The Thin White Duke’s career (gawd, we always hated that sobriquet; gawd, we hate that word, “sobriquet”) has been marked by long lazy periods where his butt was comfortably installed on its nest of laurels. But once a decade or so, he…

Every small town used to have its hip record store, run by college dropouts who were looking for a volume discount on punk rock and one-hitters. The Lost Chord down in Mankato is where we first came across the Church, twenty years ago. They were Australia’s answer to the Psychedelic Furs and Bauhaus, hidden away…

I conducted a little poll among the usual crowd—meaning Ben, Pete, and Don. I asked them what they thought about the body-hair issue. I was gratified by the wide variety of answers I got. (OK, here’s your mixed-metaphor alert: Buckle up, we’re going for broke on this one.) Pete says his wife likes a completely…

Just six months after releasing The Man on the Burning Tightrope, acerbic New York combo Firewater returns with this collection of covers, a good showcase for their sense of the smartly sinister. We’ve got no argument with their song selection, a nice blend of the obvious (“Folsom Prison Blues”) and unexpected (“This Little Light of…

We’ve never cared for the term “blaxploitation,” but we do love the movies it describes—those early-seventies action flicks that explored the experiences of African-Americans in ass-kickingly cinematic terms. They’re very much of their time—funk and seventies fashion at its most outlandishly ghetto-fabulous—but also full of attitudes toward gays and women that wouldn’t fly today. And…

“You know, you’ve got beautiful nipples for piercing,” she said. “Yeah,” he replied. Zac was nervous—his voice unnecessarily loud and shaky. “You should do three to four piercings in these nipples,” she said. How old was he? Eighteen. Ever been to Saint Sabrina’s before? No. How long had he had the lip ring? About a…