Live Active Culture

ON A RECENT NIGHT I pulled into a Borders parking lot and the radio was playing that classic house anthem " The Music's Got Me ,...

ALL THE BAD '80s ballads VH1 can muster up have got nothing on this Aussie , a member of a songwriters message board I belong to. He...

ANOTHER INGENIOUS VIDEO mashup from Tim Jones, loaded with subversive truths. Check it out . ( DISCLAIMER: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS CERTAIN ...

YEAH, DUH -- I REALIZE the name "Live Active Culture" doesn't fit this blog. Originally I'd intended this blog to preview...

WHO'D'VE THUNK THAT a stupid rap song would engender such controversy -- and not about promotion of drugs, or violence, or sex, bu...

The n"shifty" must be good. Right? And how come you never describe a really kind, altruistic person as ruthful? Or a really respo...

Dick Bangham And as far as faux-bluesman stage names go, Root Boy Slim ain't bad. Neither is his music. ("Dare to Be Fat"? )

YOU KNOW -- TAKE names of famous bands or musicians and combine them for hours of fun! A few examples I came up with (most are doubles but s...

If that's true -- and I don't doubt it is -- the members of Groovelily must be real screwed up. The name might conjure up the girl i...

FOR SOMEONE WHO hails from such icy climes, Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq is pretty hot. She has the "exotic"-culture thing go...

AYA IS THE beautiful, fragile, lost soul who writes the column "Home Far Away" for Lumpen  Magazine. She's actually living i...

GOD, I HATE to sound like I’m ghoulishly gleeful about this, because I’m not – but wasn’t it inevitable that stupid news coverage of a stup...

POP MUSIC, POPTIMISM, and finding a way to enjoy and champion good music without getting wrapped up in overwrought politics and class warfar...

EVER SEEN THAT TLC show “What Not to Wear”? I have had the misfortune to view it a few times. Yeah, I know, I’m sorry. I’ve been between job...

AROUND MIDNIGHT ON SATURDAY, and I've just left this opening at the Flat Iron Building, where I've been hanging out with the phenom...

GARRY MEIER'S RETURNED to the Chicago airwaves recently, and after listening to him on and off the last couple months, I think he'...

WHOSE SICK JOKE was it to make panties for barely-teenage girls with a picture of a cute feline on the, er, bottom front panel, with the ca...

ALTHOUGH SIMON REYNOLDS has been doing pop music criticism for almost as long as I've been living, I only discovered his writing late la...

MULLIGAN STEW. I have never laughed so hard at a rap song. (The link is to the mp3.) This is not new stuff, but SoCal's Soup The Chemi...

AS JOHN CUSACK'S character Rob Gordon muses, pop music really has screwed up entire generations with its pictures of "heartbreak,...