Kim Baxter’s (All Girl Summer Fun Band) Top 10 Favorite Things About Reuniting with AGSFB in 2023
- The amazing feeling that occurred when the 3 of us got together and started playing music again. It was like no time had passed at all. I didn’t realize just how much I had missed playing with Jen & Kathy.
- Having friends come to our shows that we hadn’t seen in ages!
- Encountering the nicest and most helpful sound people that we have ever worked with.
- Jen’s contagious excitement for playing shows & recording music again, her awesome playlists & podcast selections, and her ability to drive for hours on end.
- Figuring out that if we rent an AirBnB with a garage, we don’t have to unload our gear each night. Our favorite new tour hack!
- Getting to play shows with so many awesome bands & people-Tony Molina, Mo Troper, The Softies, Growing Pains, Who Is She?, Love in Hell, Tony Jay, Kids on a Crime Spree, Rose Melberg, Lunchbox, Wifey, Field Drums.
- Catching up, cracking up, and built-in therapy + pep talks with Jen & Kathy at band practices and on the road.
- Hitting all of the health food co-ops on tour (Kathy is an expert at finding them) and being instantly transported back to the 90’s by the smell of nutritional yeast and nag champa.
- Sitting around in our PJs after shows and watching back-to-back episodes of Selling Sunset together (so bad, yet so good).
- Making plans for future shows and writing & recording new music!
Corin Tucker (Sleater-Kinney, Filthy Friends) 2023!!
Best Portland Thai Food – Rukdiew Cafe
Best Live Album – And the wind… MJ Lenderman
Favorite Live Show – The Cure at Corona Capital
Best sport trend – Pickle Ball
Favorite Youth Slang – LFG! (In a text, it means Let’s Fucking Go)
Great albums – Black Rainbows by Corinne Bailey Rae; The Water, The Sky by Black Belt Eagle Scout
Favorite Books – My Murder by Katie Williams and The Fraud by Zadie Smith
James McNew’s Favorite songs 2023:
Staple Singers, “The Gardener” (1970)
The Cyclones with Count Ossie, “Meditation” (1973)
Thin Lizzy, “The Friendly Ranger at Clontorf Castle” (1971)
Jimmy Flemion, “Oh Babe, What Would You Say” (2022)
Little Obsessions, “Can’t See What’s Mine” (2023)
Rob Sonic, “Mink” (2023)
Dave Edmunds, “Where Or When” (1977)
Flo and Eddie, “Keep It Warm” (1976)
Ceremony, “Your Life In France” (2015)
Yozoh, “Tommy” (2022)
The Notwist, “Sans Soleil” (2021)
Evelyn Hurley (Cotton Candy): Top fave shows of 2023
I watched a lot of good television shows this year, so in no real order, here’s a list of a few or my favorite tv shows for 2023:
Slow Horses – this TV show is on a lot of peoples “Best Of” lists and there’s a good reason for that, it’s really good! The acting and stories are super suspenseful, and it’s really funny. Highly recommend!
Rain Dogs – this is a British TV show which was really touching, even though the protagonists are somewhat unlikeable and flawed. The lead actress/writer/creator, Daisy May Cooper, is super talented, and she has another show on my list, which is called…
Am I Being Unreasonable? – this is the other Daisy May Cooper show on my list, and it’s completely different from Rain Dogs. The story is so compelling and the twist at the end had me literally screaming. Definitely watch this if you can, you will not forget it.
Schmigadoon – the second season of this show was based on the musical Chicago rather than Brigadoon, and songs are catchy, the story is clever, and the singing and acting is so good. It’s a great series, watch it if you get the chance, especially if you’re old an old theater kid like me.
Afterparty – this is also the second season of this show, and it’s really so well done with clever, jokes and great acting by everyone. I did not predict the ending at all!
Physical – this was the third and final season of the show and in my opinion it’s really one of the best TV shows I’ve seen in years. Rose Byrne is so excellent, which is saying a lot because every single actor in the show is fantastic. I can see why some people are uncomfortable with this show because it might trigger some trauma people have had with an eating disorder, but the way she portrays a working business woman in the 80’s, with all the references to exercise trends, clothing, foods, is really well done without being preachy or grating. Also, big shout out to Zooey Deschanel, whose portrayal of a zany character was so great.
Big Door Prize – the show was kind of a sleeper but I thought it was really good. Chris O’Dowd is really hilarious in an understated way, and Josh Segarra was so great as the almost-successful hockey player-has been. I still can’t really figure out what is going with the plot, show but it’s a good show!
Hijack – this Idris Elba show was so good, but it’s really suspenseful, so don’t watch it if you don’t like being stressed out.
Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields – this is an amazing documentary about Brooke Shields and how she grew up in the public eye in the 70’s & 80’s. I grew up the same time as Brooke, so all the footage of her childhood was a trip down memory lane for me, only this time I realized how incredibly exploited she was by almost everyone in her life. She handled every single man, woman, TV star, movie star, interviewer, journalist, etc… with such grace and respect, even though they were all usually acting like massive creeps. (Looking at you, Bob Hope.)It’s incredible how she turned out so well adjusted, because she seems like a really cool person.
WHAM! documentary – I’m a big George Michael & Wham! fan, and this documentary was really well done and very sweet. It showed how incredibly talented and driven George Michael and Andrew Ridgely were. I especially loved how tormented George Michael was when he knew that his song “Last Christmas” wasn’t going to be the number one Christmas song because Band Aid would knock it off of its 1st place space, even though he was also on that song. But I especially loved the sweet friendship they had, and it makes me sad that Yog died way too young.
Sukhdev Sandhu (English professor, critic, event creator, and CF contributor/MC)
* Chiara Ambrosio is one of the most teeming, tireless people I know. She lives in London, is a writer and an artist and a filmmaker and a puppeteer and a publisher, and champions that which deserves championing. In this year alone: a linocut response to Yannis Ritsos’s Monochords; The Book of Raft – a companion to an upcoming film championing cultural hubs/ holdouts in London; a wonderful event at The Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury – which featured broom-dancing children, Kurdish singing and mulled wine-enhanced wassailing deep into the December night.
* I’m not sure if Mike Rubin ever sleeps. Almost every night he ranges across New York, shows in places both lofty and busted, often attending more than one event – jazz, hip hop, soul and post-soul, mangled electronica, beats from all across the world. He documents these fastidiously, making sure musicians and performers are properly credited, and flagging them up on his crucial Instagram page. It’s a wonderful resource and, in the words of the Caught by the River magazine, ”an antidote to indifference”.
* Archive Books. These days, every bookshop, big or small, cussedly individual or corporate, deserves at least two cheers. And then there’s Archive Books in Marylebone, London. It’s hard enough to get inside, far less glide down its aisles. There’s no space – except to wonder. Its shelves tower and teeter. Edwardiana for a couple of quid. Cricketing autobiographies, collected journalism of long-forgotten Fleet Strack hacks, self-published cookery books, an Aladdin’s cave of a basement crammed with music scores. Impossible to leave, most likely hours later, without a couple of bags of unknown pleasures in hand.
* There are more famous names in food journalism, but Sheila Dillon is in a league of her own. Since the late 1980s, she’s been reporting for – and later presenting – BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme. Week after week, with clarity and dry wit, she has kept listeners in the now about topics such as the baneful power of the big supermarket chains, the BSE scandal, the fall of Communism’s impact on Russian food systems. Never talking down, pretending to be our pal, or following critical fashions, she is a truly great broadcaster.
* I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. If England still exists, it’s here in this BBC Radio 4 panel show that’s been running since 1972. Its first host was jazzbo Humphrey Lyttelton, about whom Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood said, “Without his direction, we’d never have recorded/ released ‘Life in a Glasshouse.” One of the programme’s quizzes – Mornington Crescent – is as recondite as any Fall lyric. Another – ‘Uxbridge English Dictionary’ – requires contestants to supply new definitions for existing terms; among those proposed in the Christmas 2024 edition were “aspic: disgusting habit”; “jacuzzi: French for ‘I blame myself'”, and “criteria: cafe for sad people”.
* Radio – live, now, happenstance – is still a thrill. My favourites are Andres Lokko on Sveriges Radio – 2pm every Sunday. Kevin Pearce-style Modernism forever! And Jack Rollo, half of Time Is Away, helming The Early Bird Show on Fridays from 7-9am. Aching folk, glassy ambient techno, worlds of echo, a hush and a huddle for everyone who’s just about made it through another week.
* Back in March, I was lucky enough to be allowed to stage a screening, the first in North America, of Being Mavis Nicholson. How I adored the Welsh TV interviewer when I was younger. So curious, warm, intelligent. She called herself “a natural gasser”. The documentary’s director Carolynn Hitt was closer to the truth: “When a conversation is good, you’re so engrossed in it, it’s like a blanket going round you both…”
* Art galleries: take them away. Too many pious shows, lumpy wall-text, the visitors samey-same. I’ve been going, more and more, to museums. More history, sense of place, modesty. More ‘there’ there. Among my favourites this year the Stadsmuseet in Stockholm, the Franziskaner Museum in Villingen (particularly the spectacularly alarming masks and colourful costumes associated with the annual Fastnacht festivities in southern Germany), and the KattenKabinet in Amsterdam Bob Meijer founded in 1990 to celebrate feline portraiture. There are sleepy cats in some of the townhouse rooms and in the garden. Everything about the place is purr-worthy.
* Monica Zetterlund and Sivuca performing together. That scarf!
* East Broadway, New York City. When you want to get away, when you want to stay, when you want to feel like you’re somewhere: East Broadway – in the autumn, Thursday afternoons, breezes and leaf-carpeted sidewalk. Stay outside, go inside – it doesn’t matter. Carol’s Bun, Ritualarium, The House of Sages. Walk your blues, walk into blue, walk off your blues.
As always: The Style Council, ‘It’s A Very Deep Sea’; Woo, ‘This Love Affair’; Kevin Ayers, ‘May I?’; Nico Fidenco, ‘Ligados’. But also: Erlend Øye & La Comitiva, ‘Mornings and Afternoons’; The Embassy, ‘Escape’; Guy Cabay, ‘Pôve Tièsse’; Romy, ‘She’s On My Mind’.
Gail O’Hara / CF editor/photographer’s ten songs stuck in my head:
The Zombies, “This Will Be Our Year”
Gene Wilder, “Pure Imagination”
Little River Band, “Reminiscing” (because…karaoke)
Bee Gees, “How Deep Is Your Love”
“Fairytale of New York” (because … karaoke and RIP, Shane, my old neighbor)
She and Him, “I Thought I Saw Your Face Today”
All year: Connie Lovatt with Bill Callahan, “Kid”
Things I’m looking forward to: New Softies and Umbrellas albums, Heavenly and 69LS shows
Pete Paphides (author, critic, Needle Mythology records)
Condiment/seasoning of 2023: Vegan Smoky Bacon Nooch by Notorious Nooch Co.
Protein shake of 2023: Milk (semi-skimmed or oat), peanut butter, whey powder, one frozen banana, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, almonds. Blend. Drink. Oh my god.
Sandwich of 2023: The simple tomato sandwich. Trust me. Nothing else. Just some buttered bread and a sliced room-temperature tomato with a dash of salt.
Various artists anthology of 2023: Disco Discharge presents Box Of Sin. A four LP soundtrack to the gay clubbing experience of the 80s.
Single artist anthology of 2023: The Teardrop Explodes: The Teardrop Explodes: Culture Bunker 1978-1982
Music memoir of of 2023: Paul Simpson: Revolutionary Spirit – A Post-Punk Exorcism
Memoir of 2023: John Niven: O Brother
Most heroic, articulate and humane corrective to toxic masculinity of 2023: Caitlin Moran: What About Men?
Late to the party TV experience of 2023 (i): Better Call Saul
Late to the party TV experience of 2023 (ii): Season one of Fargo, especially Billy Bob Thornton as Lorne Malvo
Cereal of 2023: Robert Forster’s Spring Grain muesli
Football (soccer) hero of 2023: Spurs manager Ange Postecoglou in the interview after losing to Chelsea with two men sent off and refusing, on point of principle, to adjust to a defensive formation in order to avoid being pummelled by their eleven man opponents: “It’s just who we are, mate. As long as I’m here, that’s what we’re going to do. ‘Even with five men, we’ll have a go.’”
Carb replacement of 2023: Edamame spaghetti.
Gig of 2023, not including gigs by humans I had a hand in making: The Northern Soul Proms at The Royal Albert Hall; The Soup Dragons at Electric Ballroom; The Bluebells at Glasgow St Lukes
Gig of 2023, including gigs by humans I had a hand in making: Eaves Wilder’s last-minute set on the second stage at Glastonbury (replacing the also-brilliant Japanese Breakfast, who were/was stuck in transit).
Song of 2023, not including songs by humans I had a hand in making or artists whose album was released on my label: Nadine Shah: Topless Mother
Song of 2023, including songs by humans I had a hand in making: Eaves Wilder: Freefall. Literally my most played song of the year
Song of 2023, including songs by artists whose album was released on my label: Iraina Mancini: Cannonball. Or maybe this was my most played song. It’s close.
Album of 2023, including albums released on my label: Iraina Mancini: Undo The Blue.
Album of 2023, not including albums released on my label: Grian Chatten: Chaos For The Fly; Beatowls: Marma; Mitski: The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
Exhibition of 2023: Women In Revolt!, Tate Britain
Parental pride moments of 2023: Seeing the results of Dora Paphides’ astonishing work for The Last Dinner Party’s My Lady Of Mercy, Fred Roberts’ Say and Chinchilla’s Cut You Off; Running along Brighton seafront to a Eaves Wilder’s just-released Hookey EP and thinking my heart was about burst (in an utterly wonderful way).
Inspired musical collision of 2023: John Douglas from Trashcan Sinatras on my Soho Radio show, creating a brand new acoustic accompaniment to the vocal of Stormzy’s Firebabe.
Lazarus-style return of 2023: The Bathers: Sirenesque
Label of 2023: Last Night From Glasgow
Drink of 2023: Sainsbury’s own brand peach iced tea. And you can have as much as you want because zero calories
Meet your heroes pinch-me moment of 2023: Interviewing Chrissie Hynde for Record Collector. I was told one hour. Three hours later, I left and somehow my car hadn’t been clamped or ticketed.
Best album recommended to me by one of my heroes: When I got to Chrissie Hynde’s apartment, she played me Spooky Two by Spooky Tooth. The first thing I had to do after I left was locate a copy.
Chocolate of 2023: Snacksy Raw Chocolate with Ginger
Cake of the year: McVities Jamaica Ginger Cake with Madagascan Vanilla Custard. In a teacup or mug, eaten with a teaspoon. Whilst watching Great British Bake-Off on the sofa.
Belated realisation of 2023: Boiled eggs make great hand warmers + once you’ve warmed your hands on them, you can eat them.
Record I Didn’t Realise I Most Needed In 2023: dEUS: How To Replace It
Most perplexingly ignored album of 2023: Keaton Henson: House Party
Best Instruction Given By An Artist When Telling Their Band How To Play Their Songs During The Recording Of An Album: “Just try and channel the soundtrack of Ten Things I Hate About You” – Keaton Henson
Big-hearted, perfectly judged, very very very funny movie of 2023: No Hard Feelings. Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Barth Feldman both just utterly perfect in it.
Andrew Bulhak (music writer, DJ) Top Songs of 2023 (not necessarily in this order):
Emma Anderson – Clusters
the bv’s – warp
Hot Coppers – Hot Coppers
Jimmy Whispers – Ice Cream Truck
Lael Neale – I Am The River
Leah Senior – The Music That I Make
Pickle Darling – Kinds of Love
Slowdive – Kisses
Spearmint – tell me about my sister
Spunsugar – Metals
Strawberry Runners – Circle Circle
yeule – dazies
