How Old Are Mix Tapes?

In this week’s episode of Mrs. America (spoiler alert), the Phyllis Schlafly character opens her adolescent daughter’s mail and finds a mix cassette from a boy, which when Schlafly slides it into the tape recorder turns out to begin, shockingly (for her) and hilariously (for us) enough, with “Cherry Bomb.” Later Schlafly explains to some…

8 Indie 45s From the ’00s

Written in retrospective hindsight, as explained in more detail here. Cococoma “6 ¼ – 125”/”Take My Time” (2006) Recorded December 2005 in their hometown Chicago, so my release-year guess can’t be too far off. Either way, this speedy, muffled nugget is the sort of revisionist garage punk that genre addicts pretend rocks harder than it does…

Francophone Lands Licks, 2003

Post-script: Bertrand Cantant was eventually convicted of “murder with indirect intent,” and spent less than four years in prison. Three years after his 2007 release, his ex-wife committed suicide with him in the house. In 2012, he appeared on an Amadou and Miriam album. A solo set he released in 2017 charted at #13 in…

3 Broklyn Beats 45s

From a column called “Singles Again” (explained here), obscure little vinyl records picked off my shelf and decoded, with years of hindsight. Broklyn Beast: “March of The Oil Barons”/”The Vampire Strikes Back” (2002) Clearly there’s a concept of historical importance here, not to mention a craft project: The label – featuring a photo of George W.…

4 Indie 45s From the ’90s

Excerpts from a short-lived monthly column called “Singles Again” (should’ve been “Singles Again Again,” since I’d previously used the same title at the Village Voice) in the online magazine Blurt (after two installments on the Idolator website) in which I started to comb alphabetically (as you can see, I didn’t get very far) through my…

DOR! The Wave of the Future!

Posted more for socio-historical interest, than because it’s any good: A confusing college-daily-paper trend piece, conflating at least two different kinds of music (am I talking about new wave or talking about funk? why can’t I make up my mind?) and tossing in a questionable anti-disco subtext to make things even more disingenuous. Rap and…

A Psychotic Frog Hates Me

To be honest I have no opinion at all about the band, who I’d never given more than 30 seconds thought to before this week. Though I did mention them in print once, 31 years ago — hence my current quandary. I vaguely remember confusing Long Island’s Psychotic Frogs with the Psychedelic Furs when I…

1-girl:2-boy Amerindie Trio Licks, 2003

CORDELIA’S DAD “Jane”/”Promise”/“Closing Year” Last year, in “Camile’s Not Afraid of the Barn,” these indie-rock-moonlighting Massachusetts folk festival standbys set mysterious words about beached sharks, pellet guns, Chinatown firecrackers, and the smell of dirtbikes to a riff from “Jane Says” by Jane’s Addiction. Their new three-inch CD EP leads, coincidentally, with a traditional upstate-NY ballad…

Baader Meinhof review, 1997

Can’t argue with 100% certainty that he’s a better singer than say the Suede guy or a better songwriter than say the Pulp guy, but as melodicists they don’t come close, and Luke Haines would remain my favorite ’90s Britpop auteur (small praise, but still) even if that wasn’t his primary band’s name. The album…

G.G. Allin review, 1987

Snark, pure and simple (okay, paired with a pinch of one-upmanship I suppose), prodded by my annoyance of at an early example of the tiresome hipster schtick of pretending to like (or actually liking, who cares) music by a mentally ill person — in this case, a presumably dangerous and smelly one. In retrospect, I…