Sorry for the inconsistent posting as of late everyone, I’ve been dealing with a serious lack of attention, organization, motivation stimulation and sleep, and grief from constantly being reminded how bad the world is. That said my weekend went well enough, had some Korean takeout for dinner Saturday night. No music updates, just my Amazon Music feeds which mainly consist of hair metal, 80s-10s pop hits, and a scattered assortment of hip hop. As for the NOs I missed, Bad is great, and LIE is ok. Hope y’all are hanging in there.

Also:

TEN VIRTUAL YEARS OF ME DOING THIS @#/$)&%. Thank you for your kindness and support, this little pocket of friendliness in a really angry internet has been a wonderful outlet for me. Can’t believe I’ve been here since the height of disco.

TEN. WHOLE. YEARS.

mfw I click “No, I Hope You Go Out of Business”

Nightmare blunt rotation

A Friday Sidebar

The game of (lowercase “l”) life:

I’d take a guess and say that for some of us, we feel as if we have more questions than we have answers. And yet, for others, it’s totally the other way around.

Well, no matter which side you fall on… I hope that this weekend, you get the chance to maybe think about some of yours.

Thanks to everybody for a super-fun week here in our comment section. Please be careful, take very good care of yourselves and each other, and…

Hey! No fairsies! I saw you peek!

This single is so amateurish that it makes one yearn for the sophistication of Robin Sparkles:

Tom’s had the Weird Al link locked and loaded for YEARS waiting for today 😀

OKAY I’ve been waiting for this.

Tommy James and the Shondells released a bunch of songs in the mid-to-late 1960s. “Hanky Panky,” “Crimson & Clover,” and “Crystal Blue Persuasion” among them. Also among them? “I Think We’re Alone Now” and “Mony Mony.” Which would later be covered by two artists so dissimilar it’s weird to think they were on the same chart.

But they were on the same chart. And they achieved #1 BACK TO BACK with Tommy James and the Shondells covers in 1987.

This will never not blow my mind.

It’s you specifically, personally.

the only thing shitty about stereogum nowadays is the constant negativity and bitching in the comments section.

i don’t know which front page you’re looking at, but aside from this article, the Village People article, and the Elvis Costello article, i see a whole lot of weird indie shit on the front page right now.

the endless bitching that stereogum gives undeserved coverage to certain artists and not enough coverage to your favorite underground artists is so, so, so fucking tiresome. i don’t even care about beabadobee but christ almighty these comments are a bummer to read.

Since they promoted Tiffany via a shopping mall tour, let’s talk shopping malls.

The first modern indoor mall was the Lake View Store, built in 1915 about 3.3 miles away from where I live, in Morgan Park. Morgan Park was a company town for workers at the local US Steel mill. Tiffany never performed there, but maybe a Dorothy or Margaret might have.

Forty-one years later, and 139 miles south, the Southdale Center designed by Victor Gruen, and funded by the Dayton family, opened in Edina Minnesota. It is considered the first climate controlled indoor shopping mall in the US and is still open. Gruen was a socialist who hated how car-centric the US was. So, he designed a capitalist monument surrounded by a huge parking lot. Depending on sources, 40,000-75,000 people visited the mall on opening day, but Tiffany wasn’t available. A month later, Frank Lloyd Wright visited the mall and declared that the “Garden Court has all the evils of a village street and none of its charms.” He later noted that Gruen “Should have left downtown, downtown.” The Number One song when Southdale opened, “Hound Dog”/“Don’t Be Cruel” by Elvis Presley.

The success of Southdale Center, and the Dayton’s anchor store allowed the Dayton’s to bankroll three more of the “Dales”, Brookdale, Rosedale and Ridgedale. They also opened a regional discount store, Target, building stores throughout the Twin Cities metro area, and one about 15 minutes from the location of the Lake View Store in Duluth MN. Fun Fact: the nickname Tarzhay AKA a highfalutin way to pronounce Target, was coined at the Duluth Tarzhay. Tiffany never performed at a Target, but if she did she would be called Tiffanay.

In 1992 the Mall of America was opened about 15 minutes from Southdale. With four anchor stores, an amusement park, aquarium, and large food court, it was the largest mall in the US. Fun complicated fact: though individual stores have their own heating systems, the central atrium of the mall is only heated by passive solar power, lighting, and body heat, even in the dead of Minnesota winters. If Tiffany visited on opening day, she could have lunch at the Rainforest Café and Dinner at Hooters, but she’d have to settle for Breakfast at Bloomingdales, since it didn’t have a Tiffany’s.

In 1995 the movie Mallrats was filmed at the Eden Prairie Center mall which is a 13-minute drive from Southdale. Though Tiffany was available, she did not appear in the movie, nor on the soundtrack. I found no origin for the term mallrats, though I recently YouTubed a 1982 CBS report about a mall in Kansas. In it, a chain-smoking 15-year-old refers to herself as a mallrat.

Shopping malls peaked in the late 80s. In the mid-1990s malls were built at a rate of 140 per year, but 2007 was the first year in which no malls were built. Initially it was the glut of malls that caused their decline, but the decline was hastened by online shopping, and an aging and changing demographic. If you want to waste a day, YouTube has a surfeit of videos shot in abandoned malls.

Speaking of aging and changing demographic, I saw the Mixtape Tour in Boston which featured Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, Salt-N-Pepa, Naughty by Nature and the headliners, Boston’s own New Kids on the Block. I sat with my friend in the Boston Bruin’s box. As men, we were the minority. Many of the concert goers looked like they came straight from the mall, circa 1987. A few however looked like they might have shopped at one of the abandoned malls.

Really sad to see what this website’s become

Nothing is more “fucking tiresome” than bitching about bitching.

you guys still don’t understand that young ppl of all backgrounds, now use this word in the place of “dude” or “man”, however cringy it is? i’m not defending this guy i don’t give a fuk about him but it is reality.

Am I insane or is it possible that Wallen’s fans are supporting him not because they love racism but because they don’t want to live in a world where you can tell a drunken, regrettable joke on your own property and have someone secretly taping you from across the street and ruin your life?

Is it possible saying the n-word is fucked up and the cutthroat surveillance culture where 10-year-old tweets can make you a pariah is ALSO fucked up?

The only people that care about race, are racists. Mr.Wallen didn’t use the word, in question, in a racist manner, ask your friend Justin Bieber, I’m sure he’d know the difference.

“SpotemGottem Featuring Pooh Shiesty Or DaBaby.”

Sure, it’s the “or” that looks weird in that.