How Björk and Sigur Rós spawned the booming post-rock movement
Something supernatural on the east coast of England birthed the Beatles in the 60s. Fans in the United States fainted at their mere presence. During the 70s and 80s, the Sex Pistols and the Clash demanded a revolution and American street kids gave them one. During the 90s, the likes of Carl Cox and Paul Oakenfold held the torch as electronica swept across the ocean and over the dance floors of the United States. Simultaneously, bands like Oasis, Radiohead, Coldplay and the Muse grabbed a hold of America’s musical landscape and have yet to let go. This post-rock movement continues to boom as we blaze into the twenty-first century
And America has fallen in love again. But this time, not with England. […]
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Tags: Features · Music
“Wal-Mart,” a proponent of nuclear armaments and state-sanctioned torture told me recently, “is the embodiment of everything good about America.”
To his credit, this was a former employee of the company who appreciated their diverse hiring practices. He touted the standard mantra of any big-business apologist. Low prices. Job opportunities. Convenience.
Maybe years of watching that bouncing yellow smiley face spout peppy PR BS impeded his ability to notice the irony in selecting this blue behemoth as a metaphor for American life. For beneath the glossy façade of corporate accountability and exemplary capital gain lurks the true face of brand USA. […]
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Tags: Opinion · Commercialism · Consumerism · Sprawl
In a recent survey, conducted exclusively in my closet and laundry hamper, I discovered I am the “proud” owner of forty-one tee shirts. The breakdown of these forty-one tee-shirts is as follows: Ten blue, five black, five white, four gray, three red, two orange, two yellow, one green, one tan, one taupe, one brown, and seven ring-collared and sleeved shirts of various color combinations. Garnered through unforeseeable osmosis the last seven years, I now find myself at the mercy of these inanimate objects. […]
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Tags: Opinion · Comedy · Commercialism · Consumerism
Pot’s danger downgrade in new anti-drug ads sends a mixed message. It's in conflict with years of propaganda.
Please imagine a teenager sitting on his friends couch, holding that first joint. This is a big leap for him, ignoring years of indoctrination, contemplating the small white cylinder in his hand. It looks harmless. It smells good. The allure of rebellion inherent in the act calls out to him.
I think we all know how this little scenario usually unfolds. And it’s not with the “just say no” ending our legislators and court systems want to hear.
Billions have been poured into anti-drug ad campaigns aimed at keeping our nation’s youth off that devil’s weed. […]
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Tags: Current Events · Drugs · Marijuana
We’re all of us squatting on stolen land. Recipients and beneficiaries of an economic tour de force first made possible by the forced labor of imported Africans. Today, we have sweatshops building our consumer goods, and immigrants working for next-to-nothing manning our fields.
When slavery is illegal, cheap labor becomes the name of the game.
This is gated community USA, we’ll militarize and erect fences on our borders, keep out all those nonwhite undesirables — that is, unless they’ve come to clean our floors or pick our strawberries. All this rampant xenophobia made possible through the forced forgetting of our own history. […]
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Tags: Opinion · Genocide · Immigration · Labor
