For a grunge girl, angst is life — While my gay best friend Mark was crooning along to Toni Braxton’s “Un-Break My Heart,” I was an alt-rock snob in 1996. I didn’t wannabe a Spice Girl and I had zero interest in becoming gorgeous, glam, or girlish. Nope. I was a grunge girl. Like many a Gen Xer…

Listening to an old playlist as a form of personal archeology — The music became a game of telephone where the message scrambled somewhere in between his mouth and my heart. Am I the only one who looks back on wannabe boyfriends and thinks, Why the heck didn’t I give him a chance? Listening to old playlists, rereading old letters — at…

Warning: These are not love songs — I’m sure there must be people who have an intellectual response to music — but I am not one of them. For me, music is a big, bodily feeling: strong, real, and right now. And here’s nothing like hard rock to rev my engine. Or as Billy Corgan croons in…

6 spectacular albums that helped me start a new life — If you rescued sleeping beauty after a decade of slumber, which albums would you sit down and play for her? Where would you even start to get her caught up on what has changed in the industry or surprised and delighted you personally? In 2012, I left my husband. He…

A playlist of powerful women from Joan Jett to Sia — but mostly from the 90s — Like a lot of women — and too many men — I never learned to express my anger. At all, really, never mind in healthy ways. Mostly I learned a bunch of ways to repress it. To “laugh it off” or “get over it.” The freedom to feel and voice…

A Playlist — And both hands Now use both hands Oh, no don’t close your eyes I am writing Graffiti on your body I am drawing the story of How hard we tried How hard we tried Both Hands — Ani DiFranco The first mixed CD I ever made for a boy was when we were already in…

‘Blue’ is a lesson in ambivalence we all need to grow up — Even though I got on the airplane allegedly to “take some space,” I already knew that this was it. As soon as I boarded, I removed my wedding ring for the second time in 7 years, then I took my first deep breath in forever. …

Falling in love with the weirdest and wackiest parts of myself — Pub Crawl is a cross-publication collaboration. More about it here. When I was growing up, The Rocky Horror Picture Show was the butt of several of my father’s jokes. For whatever reason, he’d come to the outrageously erroneous conclusion that the film was only watched by an outré subculture in…

‘Androgynous guys are so manly’ — “Androgynous guys are so manly”— Jackie’s thoughts on Bowie, from That 70s Show Very, very few famous people loom as large for me as does David Bowie. I fell in love with Bowie somewhere around age 10, when I first watched Labyrinth. For those of you who think of Bowie…

It feels like the best part of falling in love, every time — I’ll tell you a secret: I find most love songs lackluster. They’re either bubble gum or whiney or toxically codependent. I tend to enjoy silly songs with pep. I love me a good angry song, full of fire; alternatively, something tragic and despairing. …

Outdoor concerts as a rite of passage — For three straight years — 1997 through 99 — I celebrated at the rock event of the summer in Canada, called Edgefest. It was one of those all-day outdoor events that require stamina and a serious dedication to hydration. …

I can already tell we’re going to be friends — There are a handful of bands that circulate through my bloodstream perpetually. I put them back on the shelf, only to find weeks or months later, a craving has crept up on me — not unlike an overwhelming urge to eat sushi. The White Stripes are one such insatiable passion. …

A Radiohead inspired short story — As soon as the morning bell rang, it was clear that their black star was about to blow out so the paranoid android climbed aboard his ship and looked back one more time at the landscape dotted with fake plastic trees and last flowers. Planet Pop is dead, he thought…