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Pop Culture Press is a music magazine founded in 1986 in Memphis, Tennessee that covered the local Memphis underground scene as well as touring bands and underground music of the era. PCP, as it was sometimes known, moved to Austin, Texas in 1988 and expanded its coverage to include national and international artists, while keeping a focus on Memphis and Texas music. Pop Culture Press was made popular by its sampler CD, which included music from Cotton Mather, Spoon, The Wedding Present, They Might be Giants and others (see list below). Prior to that, the magazine offered free flexi-discs, featuring songs from The Dentists, Dream Syndicate, Elastica and many more. Some of the sampler CDs and flexi-discs are now collector's items. Pop Culture Press was distributed around the world (UK, Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, Southeast Asia) via Tower Records, Virgin Records, and other distribution outlets.
Pop Culture Press was founded and edited by Luann Williams. Vanessa Dawne took over as editor from 1988-1990 and then transitioned to editor for the flourishing Memphis music scene. Williams continued as Managing Editor until Luke Torn, who has also written for The Wall Street Journal , Mojo, and The Austin Chronicle , took over in 2005. Over 100 writers from all over the world, many of whom went on to become music journalists for major publications, contributed throughout he magazine's history. There were sixty-six issues published, before it became a blog which eventually stopped updating in 2010. The current website, which includes archival articles and reviews, is https://www.popculturepress.net/. Luann Williams revived the magazine's trademark to create Pop Culture Press Records. Pop Culture Press Records has released two titles from LA indie band The Black Watch CD+LP: The End Of When (2013) and Sugarplum Fairy, Sugarplum Fairy (2015). [1]
The British counter-culture or underground scene developed during the mid 1960s, and was linked to the hippie subculture of the United States. Its primary focus was around Ladbroke Grove and Notting Hill in London. It generated its own magazines and newspapers, bands, clubs and alternative lifestyle, associated with cannabis and LSD use and a strong socio-political revolutionary agenda to create an alternative society.
Christopher Branford Bell was an American musician and singer-songwriter. Along with Alex Chilton, he led the power pop band Big Star through its first album #1 Record (1972). He also pursued a solo career throughout the mid-1970s, resulting in the posthumous I Am the Cosmos LP.
Covermount is the name given to storage media or other products packaged as part of a magazine or newspaper. The name comes from the method of packaging; the media or product is placed in a transparent plastic sleeve and mounted on the cover of the magazine with adhesive tape or glue.
The flexi disc is a phonograph record made of a thin, flexible vinyl sheet with a molded-in spiral stylus groove, and is designed to be playable on a normal phonograph turntable.
The Telescopes are an English noise, space rock, dream pop and psychedelic band formed in 1987 by artist, composer and musician Stephen Lawrie with band members David Fitzgerald and Joanna Doran joining later. The band’s line-up is in constant flux, there can be anywhere between 1 and 20 members on a recording.
Decibel is a monthly heavy metal magazine published by the Philadelphia-based Red Flag Media since September 2004. Its sections include Upfront, Features, Reviews, Guest Columns and the Decibel Hall of Fame. The magazine's tag-line is currently "Extremely Extreme" ; the editor-in-chief is Albert Mudrian.
Trouser Press was a rock and roll magazine started in New York in 1974 as a mimeographed fanzine by editor/publisher Ira Robbins, fellow fan of the Who, Dave Schulps, and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press". Publication of the magazine ceased in 1984. The unexpired portion of mail subscriptions was completed by Rolling Stone sister publication Record, which itself folded in 1985. Trouser Press has continued to exist in various formats.
Paint as a Fragrance is the first studio album by American punk rock band Rocket from the Crypt. It was released in 1991 by Cargo Records and Headhunter Records. It is the band's only recording featuring their original lineup, which included drummer Sean Flynn and backing vocalist Elaina Torres.
Rachel Carns is an American musician, composer, artist and performer living in Olympia, Washington, U.S. Raised in small-town Wisconsin, she went on to study painting and drawing at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, where she completed her B.F.A. in 1991. Carns began her career as drummer for Kicking Giant, later collaborating with several bands, including The Need. She is a celebrated graphic designer, working under the name System Lux, and plays drums and percussion with experimental performance art group Cloud Eye Control.
A music magazine is a magazine dedicated to music and music culture. Such magazines typically include music news, interviews, photo shoots, essays, record reviews, concert reviews and occasionally have a covermount with recorded music.
Cotton Mather is an American rock band from Austin, Texas, founded by Robert Harrison in 1990. Although the group started out as an experimental duo featuring guitar and cello, they evolved into a four-piece rock group with a sound centered around guitars and vocal harmonies. The group was initially active from 1990 to 2003, but returned from a nine-year hiatus in 2012 and have been active ever since. They have drawn comparisons to the Beatles, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Squeeze, and Guided by Voices. In his 2007 book, Shake Some Action, John Borack rated the Kontiki album at number 26 of his Top 200 Power Pop Albums of all time, comparing the album to Revolver-era Beatles, Big Star, and The Apples in Stereo. NME suggested Cotton Mather might be "the most exciting guitar pop band since Supergrass."
Future Clouds and Radar is an American rock group from Austin, Texas. It was founded by Robert Harrison after the dissolution of his previous group, Cotton Mather, and features several of the same musicians.
Kontiki is the second studio album by American rock band Cotton Mather. The album incorporates rock, pop, and psychedelic music, as well as elements of found sound and field recordings, reflecting the group's origins as an experimental act. It was recorded on four-track cassette and ADAT, leading to a rough, homemade sound. Originally released in 1997, Kontiki did not see any success until a 1999 re-release in England. In 2012, it was reissued on the Star Apple Kingdom label, with a bonus CD of extra tracks, as Kontiki Deluxe Edition.
The Black Watch is an American independent rock band from Santa Barbara, California, United States, whose only constant member has been singer, guitarist, and primary songwriter, John Andrew Fredrick. Through their thirty years in the recording industry, the group has affiliated with at least ten different record labels.
Ben Graves was a Nashville-based singer/songwriter, guitarist, and harmonica player. Originally from Martin, Tennessee, he was the lead singer in a high school band whose other members would become the hard rock outfit Fuel. He attended Wesleyan University, Berklee College of Music, and Washington State University and moved to San Francisco, where he lived from 1996 to 2003, working with Norah Jones sidemen Lee Alexander and Rob Burger, as well as current The Decemberists members Jenny Conlee and Nate Query. In 2003, he moved to Nashville Tennessee, where he worked as a sideman with country artists Rebecca Lynn Howard, James Otto, Amy Dalley, Raul Malo, among many others, and remains active as a session musician, performing songwriter, sideman, and educator.
Off With Their Heads is an American punk rock band formed in 2002 from Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Since their formation, they have often featured a rotating line-up of tour players, due to members of the band often touring with other music acts. Singer/guitarist Ryan Young has noted that having different musicians helps keep the band fresh.
Matthew Michael Melton is an American musician, songwriter and producer. Best known as the vocalist, guitarist and songwriter for Warm Soda, he also previously fronted Bare Wires and Snake Flower 2. Melton currently fronts Dream Machine with his wife Doris and has also released solo material.
The Thompson Twins Adventure is a 1984 graphic adventure game that was distributed by Computer and Video Games magazine as a promotional 7" flexi disc "freebie" along with its October 1984 issue. The game is based on the Thompson Twins' single "Doctor! Doctor!", and features the Thompson Twins band members as the protagonists. The unusual storage format of the game showcases an experimental technique pioneered by the London-based Flexi Records label, and places the game alongside a small handful of other games distributed on grooved disks. This format never became established and The Thompson Twins Adventure is today valued more for its nostalgic and artifactual value than for its ludological aspects which have been uniformly panned by critics.
Fabrizio Poggi is a singer and harmonica player. A Grammy Awards nominee who has received the Hohner Lifetime Award, and has been two times Blues Music Awards nominee, Jimi Awards nominee, and during his long career has recorded twenty two albums. He has performed in the US and Europe with the Blind Boys of Alabama, Garth Hudson of the Band, Steve Cropper, Charlie Musselwhite, Ronnie Earl, John P. Hammond, Marcia Ball, Guy Davis, Eric Bibb, Flaco Jimenez, Little Feat and many others.
Nathaniel Dowd Williams, known as Nat D. Williams or simply Nat D., was an American high school teacher, disc jockey on Black Appeal radio, journalist and editor. He was born on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. Known for his jive patter on the air, Williams had 10% of African-Americans in the U.S. listening to his program and heralded the changing radio style which helped to create "Black appeal radio", which it turn led to the urban contemporary listening format of Black radio in the 1960s and '70s.