This issue of SF! is the kiddie issue; and though I'd kinda like to just go with "no comment," I guess I should point out for those less obsessed with indie rock minutiae that it began there. The records, the covers, the airwaves. Childhood is everywhere. It's gotten to the point where every week WXYC's mail includes a stack of releases featuring kids or kids' drawings. A theme that began (for the most part) in the 80's with bands as widely divergent as Beat Happening, the Residents, Happy Flowers, Half Japanese and Marine Girls has now become, as my buddy Franz says, a parody of itself.
And it's all over pop culture, inseparable, it seems, from Generation X. The fashion that music inevitably inspires. Girly dresses. Bowl haircuts. Striped shirts and cords. Lunchboxes. Douglas Coupland. Flintstones. Maybe we should be thankful that Kurt Cobain is being heralded as the spokesperson for our generation after all. It could be worse. It could be, oh I dunno, Bam-Bam.
Remaking childhood is in itself neither a good nor a bad thing. When the kiddie trend is beat to death by mainstream media in the oncoming months, the losers will be among our most creative, those that get lumped in with a mess of copycats. If there's one point I hope this SF! makes, it's that deciding who's who isn't a black & white issue; that all criteria is individually subject to context; that dividing the world up into cool/uncool kids, indies/majors, punk/pop, male/female is, well, dumb.
Anyway, thanks to the folks who wrote in about Sophie Tucker and sorry your tapes were so late (if you still haven't received yours, don't worry, I'm a bit behind). Also thanks to Bob Boster for dubbing everything. Maybe when I get a moment I'll make some more mixed tapes of weird pop vocal stuff for those of you who get off on that kind of thing.
Many thanks go out to all the bands who played the Spring Ball, to Lewis and Mary, Nate, Megan, Pat, Mike S. , Bob. B., the men of WXYC, and especially Charlie Speight who not only helped decorate, but stayed to clean up. Big thanks to Susan B. Anthony Somers-Willett for lending the printer and David D. for a place to stay in Olympia (knock wood).
Oh yeah, congradulation to Pat Anders for getting a job. And to Jay Huber for finishing law school. Ya'll rock!
Love, etc.,
Carrie
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