Month: February 2024

Vono – “Dinner Für 2” (1982 / 2017)

This cover reached out and grabbed me as I flipped through the used New Arrivals bin at St. Paul’s Agharta Records the other day. It’s truly arresting, the simple pink lettering overlaying the not-quite-avantgarde black-and-white photo of brothers Volker and Norbert Schultze (the band name is a combo of the first two letters of each […]

R23X – “Veltahl” (2016)

I don’t know a lot about vaporwave, though I like most of what I have heard. Lots of people have written lots of words about the subgenre, many, if not most, derogatory, but I don’t understand the hate, which often seems directed at the aesthetics – many artist names and songs utilize symbols, non-standard capitalization, […]

[Morris Day and] The Time – “Ice Cream Castle” (1984)

We were in Minneapolis for a few days to see friends and catch The Kills at the infamous First Avenue, the club Prince brought to national awareness by featuring it so prominently in the film Purple Rain, where it almost became a character in its own right. And of course any time we travel I […]

Plat – “Compulsion” (2004)

When I think back to how we learned about musical artists back in the 1980s and 90s I have to shake my head. It’s amazing anyone who didn’t live in a major city could discover anything outside what was fed to us via mainstream radio, magazines, and MTV. If you were lucky you lived somewhere […]