Pop culture treasure, high culture trash.

Monday, July 16, 2007

White Blouse Disco



Playing catch-up due to lack of internet access.

The new Rasputina record is really good, if baffling to review since I'd already played my concept album card for Mirah. Maybe we're having an esoteric concept album renaissance. Dame Darcy did the video for "1816, The Year Without a Summer" and her style makes barnfuls of sense when you've got all that dulcimer and Mary Shelley-referencing going on.

Stevens Square Zinefest was super and had reams of zines, mostly per-, anarchist and graphical. I finally met Lacey, my successor in The Sanden Totten Experience, and since she happens to be the zine librarian for the Belfry's Bat Annex collection I got to check out Tight Pants #7. Jenna Freedman was there and led a discussion about zines, their relationship to vanity pubs and uncertain future in our increasingly digibonkers netiverse. The best part was when she asked whether there is any riot grrrl energy in Minneapolis anymore. Laura Larson of Baby Guts and Kitten Forever was sitting literally four feet in front of her, cross-legged, bag with a Bikini Kill patch by her side. She smiled and said quietly, "Yeah. Yeah, there is." The Kitten Forever Sissy Party cassette was on sale for a measley $3.00 American so I adopted a pink one and took it home. It is nice to purchase a recording when all the members of its band are in the room with you, and you are not even at a show. This is an essential cassette tape, for serious-serious. Kitten Forever are the Go-Go's in 1982. No! They are the Runaways in 1975. NO, NO. ACTUALLY they are the Mo-dettes in 1979. They are that shiny with promise and feminism and guitar snark.

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