Volume 12 Issue 10
Al Qaeda From Day One
I don't think of myself as a journalist. I never went to university, I never went to college. I was 18, came from this very crappy part of London, Acton, and had been on the dole when I got a job in the mailroom of the Sunday Times. One night I started...
Cult Classic
No matter what they tell you, everyone has typed their own name into a search engine at some point to see what comes up. For most, it's a disappointing exercise in discovering just how irrelevant we are. For Vashti Bunyan it was a different story. She...
Music Is Boring
Screeching Weasel is pretty much the best band ever. Before the "pop punk" label become an insult, it simply meant punk rock written by a slightly more advanced species of miscreant, one with an ear for melody and some vague semblance of songwriting...
Bad Friends Are Good Friends
Las Malas Amistades is a loosey-goosey collective of Colombian artists who get together every couple of years and make music. It's all very four-tracky and simple, earnest and poppy. It's kind of like if the Young Marble Giants sang in Spanish and didn...
Hispanic Panic
Puerto Ricans have their own parades and shit, but what about the Dominicans? What are they, chopped pollo?
All The Places I Never Wanted To Go
06.8.05, Orlando, FLWe're on the Warped Tour and I feel like we're sore thumbs. Fear Factory and their crew seem to be the first band to really attempt to embrace us as friends and fans
Tidbits
THE HIPSTERAfter getting bored of simply putting out records and magazines and blah blah blah, Vice decided it was time to hit the road-literally-and make their own motorbike. It's called
Nothing New
Talk about double standards: UK rappers are always being crucified for copying the Yanks, but 24-year-old Americana nut Dan Lea gets away with it with ease. As By The Fireside, he's part of a new breed of British songwriter completely obsessed with the...
I'm Busted
Here's what basically every single day in here is like for me.5:30 AM, doors crack: The cellblock comes to life as the CO cracks the door. I wake up, brush my teeth, wash my face, and throw on my khaki prison uniform in anticipation of chow...
Conspiracy Theories In The Woods
A couple of years ago two guys I know from back in the day took their hi tech gadgets, moved into a tepee in the woods and started a website about the Conspiracy. I took my wife and went to live with them for 24 hours, and this is what they told me.
Gaijin Baby
There are somewhere in the vicinity of 34 million people living and working in the Greater Tokyo area, of which 691,000 (2%, according to my calculations) are non-Japanese. About 3% of these gaijin freeloaders (ie. over 20,000) get married to a local...
Back Of The Tram
It's pretty cool that we have trams in Melbourne. The only other place I'm aware of that has trams is San Fransisco and after doing a cursory Google search, it appears my knowledge is extensive. Taking trams rules over taking buses because they don't...