By Jesse Walker
I can tell you the day the so-called Vietnam syndrome started to die. On November 12, 1979, four and a half years after the last American troops fled Saigon, a new single was shipped to record stores and radio stations, a ballad by the fellow who’d had a smash hit a year before with “The Gambler.”
In the early 1970s, scores of liberated, fertile women were eager to join the sexual revolution. Along with the diaphragm and IUD, the recently available birth control pill gave women the autonomy to decide when and if they would have children. With so many options and the pill so new, where could a woman turn to get reliable advice and information about contraception?
For any Italian, the Summer of 1982 means one thing: the country’s victory at that year’s FIFA World Cup final. The faded images of the nation’s president, 86-year-old Sandro Pertini—a socialist partisan who had fought against Nazi-Fascism during World War II—practically beside himself with joy when Alessandro Altobelli scored the third goal against Germany…
Cash Box magazine was a music industry monthly that was in print from 1942 to 1996. Like its industry counterpart Billboard, Cash Box contained multiple weekly music charts based on music genres, from Pop to R&B to Jazz to Classical…
The indistinct line that a site like We Are the Mutants walks means that accusations of nostalgic indulgence are ever at the door, so let me put my cards on the table and state that I’d rather cave in my own face with a Pet Rock than listen to Intergalactic Touring Band again…
By Ted Mills
Hardy Fox passed away in October of 2018 and, as he was nearing the end of his life, he let it be known to fans what they had secretly suspected for years: that he had been the main composer for the avant-garde band The Residents…
By The Mutants
I’ve always been sort of morbidly fascinated by the music that toiled in the shadows of the big 1980s pop behemoths, which is why I love it when we do these “Six Songs” features. And as far as pop behemoths go, 1984 was The Year: Thriller was beginning its gradual slide out of supremacy, making way for other titans…
By Ted Mills
It starts as it always does, with the sound of a cold, synthetic wind, whistling tones, and the nervous twitch of a Morse code signal. There’s a short intake of breath, a low om-like hum. A message needs to get through. And then our singer steps up to the mic…
By J.E. Anckorn and Michael Grasso
Muse enjoyed a brief moment of cool back when “Knights of Cydonia” rode the lands, but they’ve never been cool since. Liked by The Wrong Type of Nerd, Italian guys with great hair, and people who have very serious conversations about guitars in magazines called things like Fretful Gentleman Monthly, they seem to be trying a little too hard to be good at playing rock music for Serious Music Types…
This album full of spiritually-minded pop-funk was the product of a pair of teenage artists—vocalist/drummer Chris McDaniels (then 16 years of age) and elder brother, guitarist, producer, and arranger London McDaniels (all of 17 in 1978). The brothers had grown up in Southern California among the music business…
