Word: punked
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...songs by 15 bands on this album offhandedly mix genres that until recently were oil and water: pop, punk, rap and heavy metal. This practice has become as de rigeur as nipple rings for bands over the last couple years, but it's easy to forget how alien it was to audiences of the recent past. Throughout the bulk of the '90s, the perceived incompatibility of these genres was more than musical; it was subcultural. The cheerleader listened to pop, the wannabe-street kid listened to rap, the aspiring Sundance auteur with the sideways haircut listened to punk. When...
...Look at the teen flicks of the '80s. In their vision of high school, "crowd" is everything. In 1983's "Valley Girl," Nicolas Cage plays a semi-mohawked Hollywood surf-punk with a crush on the suburban aristocrat of the title. When he sings along to a new wave tune on the radio, her cheerleaderish friend reacts as is he's reciting from "Mein Kampf." When he and his buddy decide to sneak into a party at her house where jocks in polo shirts cavort to bubbly synth pop, it's not social awkwardness they're worried about; should things...
Diva means goddess. All right, the word is as goofily overblown for a female vocal star as "artist" is for any punk with a record contract. But as a job description, "diva" carries certain burdens. One must not only sing one's heart out; one must expose it to the harshest elements. What becomes a legend most? Suffering. A childhood of deprivation; liaisons with powerful, possibly dangerous men; career triumph soured by personal despair. A life of melodrama makes the diva more human, thus more godlike, to her fans. A catchy moniker helps: Callas...Garland...Lady Day...Whitney. The singer...
Perry Farrell knows the value of a weird rock-'n'-roll name. In the late '80s he fronted Jane's Addiction, the artsy Los Angeles punk-metal outfit. He christened his next group, Porno for Pyros, while flipping through a fireworks catalog. And when he started an eclectic summer music festival complete with freaky sideshow acts, he dubbed it Lollapalooza after hearing the absurd word in a Three Stooges short. Even his stage name is a word twist. Born Perry Bernstein, he renamed himself "peripheral": Perry Farrell...
...many "indie" record labels at large in the '80s, but it had the foresight to sign Sonic Youth and Dinosaur, Jr., bands whose followings both eventually dwarfed that of Black Flag and those of their `80s punk contemporaries, like Boston's Mission of Burma and Washington D.C.'s Minor Threat. The shows they played were booked at venues older proto-alternative bands had already played, but they had their work cut out for them selling America and Europe on innovative, unpolished sounds...