Soul Sisters
I don’t have the guts to do a full Top Ten Trends for 2005 list. But here’s three:
1) There will be an alarming increase in the number of cougar attacks in the US.
2) This is the year IE takes a big hit. Firefox and others (Google?) will do the damage.
3) Disco.
Speaking of disco, I’m a little baffled by the dizzying ascension of the campy Scissor Sisters. Sure, all rock and pop music is recycled but this band’s sound is so shamelessly derivative. But I really want to like them. Despite a NYC address and their total domination of the UK, it turns out the band has Kentucky roots. In fact, the Sisters’ Scott Hoffman (aka, um, Babydaddy) is a proud alum of St. Michael’s, the Episcopalian school where my mom teaches kindergarten. NPR’s Alison MacAdam recently caught up with Hoffman, her best friend from kindergarten (she attended St. Michael’s as well). It turns out the two of them lived parallel lives in Lexington. Both were outsiders. “I didn’t fit in. And neither did Scott… Scott was gay and Jewish. I was a tomboy and a nerd. Lexington, a city of about 200,000 people then, wasn’t the most diverse or accepting place. Football, basketball, and cheerleading were what mattered. Gay was not OK. Scott said he didn’t know anyone growing up who was out of the closet. As far as being Jewish, in Lexington there were only enough Jews for two synagogues. After graduating high school, Scott moved to New York City…”
December 14th, 2004
Billy
Friday, December 17, 2004
Darin, Did you read the article in the latest Ace Weekly about the Scissor Sisters at the Dame? Anything look familiar? Three of the paragraphs were plagiarized from this Pitchfork Media album review. Three entire paragraphs, word-for-word! Further investigation reveals that another line (…”They had the gumption to make it a disco track, with BeeGees?style falsetto vocals.”) was taken from this St. Louis pop culture zine. Unbelievable.
I sent Rhonda Reeves an email but haven’t heard back yet…
Darin
Friday, December 17, 2004
Doves’ new album comes out March 1 in the US if I’m not mistaken.
Info here: http://www.nme.com/news/110834.htm with a link to the first single. My buddy said it sounded like “Manchester meets Motown”. Pretty cool song.
So far SXSW is the only US date set.
Snow Patrol is good too. I read the Scissor Sisters article in Ace but didn’t know they had plagiarized, much less directly from two different sources. Pretty crappy IMO. I don’t know if Ace is short staffed or what. They don’t seem to have as many meaty articles as they once did.