Nicki Click at the Mill Creek Tavern

Hornet Leg at the Mill Creek Tavern

Maple Rabbit at the Mill Creek Tavern

Of Montreal sell out again

At the Trocadero in Philly

More clinic@netomat

Clinic

Clinic at johnny brendas

When the Payola scandal broke a few years ago, I was really dissapointed by the use of the word "indies" to refer to the middlemen who brokered the deals between major labels and radio to buy airtime for their artists. I felt that people who didn't know what indie rock, indiepop, or just indie music was would confuse the marketing machines with the small labels and artists who were completely irrelevant to the scandal.

If you're unfamiliar with the scandal, read Payola: The Dirty Industry Practice That is Ruining Hip-Hop or the document containing actual facts and figures about the practice.

I don't know if the use of the word "indie" meant anything to anyone else, but in an odd turn of events, the major corporate radio firms have voluntarily agreed to set aside 8400 half-hour blocks of airtime for independent artists not affiliated with the major labels.

After seeing the Apples in Stereo twice last month I really felt like it might be a magic year for an indiepop band to have a major hit single. It would be no stranger than some of the hit singles I remember coming out of regional radio (ie Harvey Danger's "Flagpole Sitta" on KNDD and Dead Eye Dick's "New Age Girl" come to mind).

And if anyone would like to hire me to program some of those blocks, I'm available.

As amazing as The Secret History were at Cakeshop on Friday night, I am too tired to write a public piece on my experience so instead, I distract you with my big Flickr project for the evening:

My Mom with the Casualties in 1995



Okay, this might be the funniest picture ever. See, my parents were driving up to Boston to pick me up from a Sonic Youth show (Helium opened btw, Bikini Kill was supposed to and cancelled). My mom saw this punk band in the parking lot of a rest stop and asked if they were Sonic Youth. "No," Jorges said, "we're the Casualties!" "My daughter has probably heard of you, can I get my picture taken with you?" And that is how I got a picture of my mommy with the Casualties.

Like mother like daughter I suppose, as the dorky photos of me with Superchunk at Princeton University attest to, this was May 5 1996
Also in that set are some far away photos of the Magnetic Fields, as I was really nervous we were going to be busted for being trespassing high school students at the show.

Evidence that the Cakeshop is my least favorite venue to take photos in even though I adored The Secret History last Friday night:


Sleater Kinney Setlist from 4/6/96 (pre-Janet) at the Unitarian Church in Philly:


And since this is so much about 1996, let's take a look at me around that time in my natural habitat, photocopying my zine at Office Max.