Frats...sororities...Greeks, just another subculture of the mainstream with organization, dues and housing facilities. Yet America is filled with movies about the misfit frat (you know, consisting of members that would never be in the other frats) somehow rising up and dominating the other more typically preppy insidious frats. That this usually never happens in real life is the first earthshaking revelation of mine. In a way it's a microcosm of real life. Some choose to hang with people who need to be impressed by you in order to accept you, no matter how much/little money you might have. It's all about isolating yourself into smaller and smaller subsets as you grow up. Which route you choose depends. In college I associated with one frat in particular though...they were the "anti-frat," i.e. yes technically they were a fraternity but they were the "misfit frat" like in the movies, only with more drugs and musicians and long hair and that kind of stuff. Not really sure what the point was--just seemed to re-affirm in some weird way the "conformity of non-conformists" if you catch my drift. But they were happy in their weirdness and anti-establishmentarianism. One could argue that the indie scene and its various subgroups are a kind of frat/sorority. You got your look, your uniform. You got your dues (i.e.Tigermilk, all the right/newest albums, tickets to shows, etc.). You got your initiation rites (past as riot grrl/punk boy, listening to a mixtape, making the mixtape, making your own zine, having a band, knowing someone in a band, dj-ing, knowing someone who dj's, knowledge of obscure bands if only by name, etc.). You got your snobbery (say against people who, when asked what kind of music they listen to, say "I like everything really!" when they mean everything on VH-1). It's just a different consumer culture we celebrate, that of the little guy/girl trying to make it (thrift stores, indie labels, your friend's band, etc.) rather than the monster truck corporation ruling the world (band playing the local Enormodome, J. Crew, Drakkar Noir, etc.). Not that I'm arguing that. I'm just sayin', someone could say that.:) In other news, has anyone experienced the radio format of Jammin' Oldies/Gold? Here in Philly one of our modern-rock stations (which in itself seems to be a dying format, oh well), 95.7, just switched to this format. It's great, '60s/'70s/'80s soul and R&B music. Unfortunately at the moment there is only a robot running the station (no human DJ's), so while that does mean more rock and less talk, there has also been a little too much "Night Fever" for my taste. Ditto with Donna Summer. I only heard "I'm Coming Out" once so far darn it! (Apparently the old DJ's were told 15 minutes before the format change that their jobs were null and void...that kinda sucks for them, but radio format changes always seem to be like that. Whoosh it's gone) But in principle it's the best thing since...the Philly sound, really, and you have to wonder why it went out of style. The oldies stations do their part in playing that stuff but sometimes you just want nonstop soul and upbeat R&B, back when it was exciting and not the flaccid "R&B" we know today. A friend of mine pointed out that the popularity of this format across the nation might wake people up to the fact that there has been very little good R&B for the past fifteen years... Keep on doin' it, Xavier BXK M o t h e r , M a y bkim0@dept.english.upenn.edu I S l e e p http://www.english.upenn.edu/~bkim0 W i t h D a n g e r ? X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X---X +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the reborn Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail "sinister@majordomo.net". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@majordomo.net". WWW: http://www.majordomo.net/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "jelly-filled danishes" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+