Opinion
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Insert Foot: National Daughters Day, punk rock boyfriends and bleeding on strangers
Insert Foot vs. boyfriends and National Daughters Day. Social media told me Saturday was National Daughters Day, which I didn’t know existed. My first thought was to wonder if Iron Maiden celebrates “Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter” day. My second thought was to think my first thought was…
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Insert Foot: Rock books and dying dreams of COVID-19 lockdown
Insert Foot ignoring reality by doing some light reading. You want hope that 2020 will work itself out anytime soon? Sorry. This is where your dreams come to die today. Here’s how optimistic I am the virus-soaked coast will clear to emerge from our dark corner/mother’s basement/fire shelter made…
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Doctor Sung of TWRP on battling 2020 with positivity, working with Oakland’s Planet Booty
TWRP, Courtesy. Editor’s note: The colorful costumes and on-stage personas of Tupperware Remix Party (TWRP to its fans) are appropriately “over the top.” But keyboardist-singer Doctor Sung, guitarist Lord Phobos, bassist Commander Meouch and drummer Havve Hogan really are as hopeful as their music. The group, which got a start…
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Insert Foot: No better time for Bruce Springsteen to rise up again
Insert Foot Loves The Boss. What happens when Bruce Springsteen is no longer around to scrape us from the pavement after life rips out our guts and smashes the rest into the ground? Excuse me if I just don’t see BTS or Cardi B coming to sooth our troubled…
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Insert Foot: Sorting Sunday’s senseless splendor of stupidity
Insert Foot and the Cave of Solitude. Photo: Alberto Loyo/Shutterstock. So, the plan is to write in Kanye West’s name when we all vote in November … right, you guys? Rendering: Adam Pardee/STAFF. Guys? Why not? How is Kanye West not a viable candidate for president in 2020–the year…
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Insert Foot: President Trump and the art of not getting art, or irony
Insert Foot Vs. Donald Trump. It’s just another Scrambled Sunday, when ideas for making an omelet frequently become trying to salvage messy eggs from a burned skillet. Another of my go-to phrases over the years has been “Irony can be so ironic.” I don’t remember where it came from;…
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Insert Foot: The watering hole is drying up for music—and writers
Rendering: Adam Pardee/STAFF. If you’ve watched a lot of Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom—whatever, you’ve witnessed the time-lapse scenery progressions of the African watering hole, as the animals continue to show up despite the lake becoming a pond, then a puddle, then mud. Then the…
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Insert Foot: What live act would you risk seeing during COVID-19?
Insert Foot vs. risking your life at drive-in concerts. A RIFF editor recently asked me to cover an upcoming drive-in concert by Sublime with Rome at a local fairground, drive-in lot, or giant field of wheat in the middle of … somewhere. I was informed it’s one of the…
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Insert Foot: Cherish the memories, as 2020 is the end of the line for many live acts
Insert Foot vs. the future, and the possible end of the old guard like Fleetwood Mac. Photo and rendering: Roman Gokhman/STAFF. People love to say something is “the end of an era.” Usually it’s someone older than you, trying to say they remember when things were better. Or, in…
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Opinion: ‘SongSex’ with Shelly Peiken—run to the studio, get to it from all angles
Shelly Peiken, Courtesy: Dia Morgan. Editor’s note: Shelly Peiken may be best-known for writing female-empowerment anthems like Christina Aguilera’s No. 1 hit, “What a Girl Wants” and Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch,” but she’s been busy behind the scenes in the music industry for two decades. She’s written for many of…
