If The Warriors had ended with a dance party instead of a guy getting a switchblade through the wrist, Bare Wires could have been provided the soundtrack. Lead singer-songwriter-guitarist Matthew Melton discusses high school beatings, late ‘80s Memphis underground cassette rap and exactly which American city lives up to its frightening reputation. This interview by Tom Child.

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Teenage Fanclub make pop songs like Big Star but make them faster and lasted longer, and their newest Shadows is out now on Merge. They speak now before returning to America and display respectable capability for details on rock ghosts and rock genitals. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

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Just when you think summer’s over, a heat wave comes to L.A. and Waved Out 2 comes to the Echoplex, to hose us down with the reverb-soaked sounds of teenage noise pop, chill wave, surf punk and psych-folk. I didn’t know what to expect.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said there are no second acts in American lives and a resilient and lucky breed of Americans have been proving him wrong ever since. First heard from as the gravelly Memphis boy bluesman fronting The Box Tops, where he suffered rockstar burnout while making hit records even so crabbed an anticommericalist [...]

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Straight and Frankenstein tall stood Kim Fowley in the low-roofed Redwood Lounge last weekend. Presiding over another installment of “Hollywood Sexual Underground”, the legendary songwriter-producer-impresario was haranguing a roomful of sweating freaks and lovelies when I clambered in off the street on another boiling hot Friday night. “Are there any lesbians or drunks in the house tonight?” he intoned from somewhere near the ceiling, glowering about the narrow room like a rock ‘n’ roll Vincent Price.

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Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple were (legendarily) the only people in North Carolina who bought Big Star albums the very first time around, and they’d team up most famously for the power-pop band the dB’s. (Stamey would also release Chris Bell’s 45 and Holsapple would go on to play with Hootie and the Blowfish!) They are now teamed up as a band with no official name. This interview by Dan Collins.

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The Dream Syndicate found whatever was in Sister Lovers and Tonight’s The Night still breathing in L.A. in 1984 and used it to make Medicine Show, still a nervous and wild local classic. Guitarist-singer Steve Wynn will perform the album in its entirety tonight with his band the Miracle 3. He speaks now from a quiet park in New York. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

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