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Marijuana and music were the main things I took away from my teenage years, and besides teenage girls, were my only interests until I got out of college. Like all weirdo high school kids with a pot habit, I especially enjoyed my two hobbies in tandem, and any music that got better when I was stoned held a special place in my oversized CD book. This was also the time when my musical taste was arguably the worst of my life, inundated with typical pothead choices, and music that you could only appreciate when you were really high on Midwest ditch weed. In a lot of ways, I was an enhancement smoker. I was irritating. To make matters worse, we discovered mushrooms during our junior year. If our tweaker mentality had been annoying when we smoked a lot of pot, it was flat unbearable once we...

Iron Maiden is the first band that I can remember absolutely and unquestionably loving. I don't know if it was the dark themes that played to my adolescent mind, or the comically low budget videos filled with old tyme silent film stock featuring men and women reenacting wars between 'injuns' and the white man or wars between the white man and the white man. Who am I kidding? It was the fucking album covers! They had the best album covers ever. They featured a corpse monster who was obviously an early 80s punk/metal fan and his name was Eddie, just Eddie. Eddie was the best, especially for a young jag off like me, whether he was killing a random stranger with a blood soaked ax, trapped in a mental asylum after having his brain removed, having is visage used as the inspiration for a massive...

Normally, hip hop shows are celebrations of looking uninterested. Having been to a shitload over the past decade or more, I'm used to the three consistent aspects of every underground hip hop show: Over 50% of the crowd is either related to or friends with the rappers performing. Those not directly connected to the rappers are generally bored or unimpressed with said rappers, and are usually standing back demonstrating their aloof contempt with silence Crowd participation is limited to occasional hand raising or finger gun waving, but none of this is consistent and there is no "rhyming along" with the rappers. Hip hop shows aren't where you go to feel inspired. Fortunately we didn't go to a fucking hip hop show. So Friday me and Smooth Lou went and saw the Family Vacation Tour...

In National Lampoon's Vacation Clark Griswald was all middle aged sexual regrets. His son's gingerfied sexual frustrations were only heightened in the second film's escapades. Rusty's European Tour would have contained more action if he wore fewer berets and followed the sexual sonic lead of this month's Pop Culture Collide contributor, Kotomi. Covering The Power Stations Some Like It Hot Kotomi cranks up her electro haunt sound to new levels of digital dalliance that would have honeymooning newlyweds banging over some croissants at breakfast. Yes Russ, Kotomi is totally gonna pork you. A Word From Kotomi I was on a plane to Europe, and I fell into a deep ambien-induced slumber. I imagined myself dancing feverishly with a very tan Clark W. Griswald, in a densely crowded,...

Our friend in sin, Christian, casually slipped this under the syffal.com office door. Seeing as how we don't have an office door, it was pretty sly of that scarred fiend to do so. What he left, besides the weird blood patterns and the smell of meth, was perhaps one of the best reasons why people who are constantly looking for great music KEEP fucking LOOKING. Shakey Graves is an enigma to us. His bandcamp page says thisRoll the Bones album was released in 1987. Tim was in college at that point and I still hadn't discovered masturbation, so if the 1987 date is in fact true, well, then this dude has a pretty fucking shitty manager/publicist. But I don't fucking care. This is exactly what I needed in my life this summer. When everything feels so fucking over-produced and forced, ...

Disclaimer: Yes, this has nothing to do with music, the band that I stuck around for, Bubbly Creek Bluegrass, (a bluegrass band yes!) was fucking awesome. So there. Music shit out of the way. Two Brothers Disclaimer: I love many of your beers. I have spent in upwards of a thousand dollars over the past few years choosing your product over others. I have visited your brewery for tours six times in two years. I almost died of a burst appendix on your property. The following article is written out of disappointment, not spite. Please fix your festival. I attended the Two Brothers Brewery Hop Juice Festival a few days ago. I brought my three hilarious children and my gorgeous wife. I did not stay long. And in the process of leaving, convinced nearly a dozen people not to...

Memorial Day just passed and we are now officially in summer. For those of you who live in warm weather climates year round, first off, Fuck you, and secondly you probably cannot really appreciate the wonder that is summer. It is a god damned rebirth, we shed our gigantic winter coats and novelty Tom Brady endorsed Ugg boots and spend the next 3 months in nothing but Speedos, mesh undershirts and a quarter inch layer of Ban de Soleil sun tanning oil. It is our moment, our all too brief moment to feel human. At least until the concrete traps the humidity and the entire city smell’s of piss. I bring up summer because I have found what is going to be my summer soundtrack, every man needs one, and I am nothing if not an everyman. This year’s winner is the EP Youth by L.A. Girlfriend...

My dearest Gashcat, Completely unknown to the majority of people in the universe, but oh so familiar to me now. After being sent a link to their album Reunion last week, I have been listening to these guys non-stop. It arrived at a perfect time. It's like I'm an Afghani market haggler and I haven't seen a woman's thigh in decades, but these fifis keeps walking by showing a bit of that downy, furry ankle/calf. I know the full on thigh shot is coming, hell my fruit stand is right across from the burka seamstresses, but I have yet to see the glorious thigh in all its prickly, thighly glory. The thigh? It is Spring. The market haggler? Tis I. I just can't seem to get a fucking hold of it. Gashcat have given this tumultuous time of year when you can't bet on anything scheduled...

For some time SYFFAL has been looking to involve the bands that we love to a greater extent on our site. Topless photos of rappers, favorite lox recipes (HI EL-P!) and chortle-inspiring interviews are swell, but we wanted to give our readers added inspiration to peep our naughty bits on a regular basis. We all love cover songs. While we might not want to see a shit bar band playing She Talks To Angels, the familiar embrace factor is apparent, and you probably already know that SYFFAL loves pop culture. Our writing is knee deep in nostalgic hoopla and retro porn references. So... what if we asked our favorite bands to record a cover of their favorite theme song from tv shows/movies/cartoons/video games/etc... from our past? People are drawn to nostalgia. We're drawn to great fucking music...

There’s something about Scandinavia that I can’t help but love. I’m not really sure what region that term covers, but my personal boundaries are Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, etc. Any place with lots of blonde people, glaciers, and fjords qualifies in my book. Acts like Sigur Ros, Bjork, Mum, Mew, and Lykke Li have been instant favorites, either despite or because of the fact I usually can’t understand a fucking thing that they’re saying. Most musicians from that area have a quirky story about their childhood that makes perfect sense given the context of their music. Lykke Li, for example, lived on a mountaintop in Portugal for 5 years as a child, and her family vacationed in Lisbon, Nepal, India, and Morocco. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried, go check her wikipedia page....