Jenny Shank

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Break Out

The beat of the street makes the Freestylers feel like dancing.

By Jenny Shank
Dec 9, 1999

Dateline, 1982: At the annual talent show at an elementary school, the majority of performers enjoy spinning on their heads atop pieces of cardboard. The breakdancing craze has stretched from coast to coast like one gigantic cultural rubber band, even encompassing the streets of cities like Denver. Kids are spinning...
Animal Instincts

The Pet Shop Boys maintain their pop pedigree with a new album and tour.

By Jenny Shank
Nov 4, 1999

Andy Warhol once wrote, "A person is entitled to the lighting they need." It's a philosophy the Pet Shop Boys seem to have taken to heart throughout the two-decade span of their careers as dance-music innovators. The Boys peaked during the synth-pop happy Eighties, thus ensuring that their songs would...
Better Living Through Chemistry

The Chemical Brothers try to move beyond the hype.

By Jenny Shank
Jul 15, 1999

Techno never completely invaded America, in part because the electronica revolution could not be televised. Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands, better known as the Chemical Brothers, are a case in point. Their music has plenty of personality and bravado, but the pair are hardly seen in their own videos and...
England's Shame

No one told Gomez's Tom Gray that British rock stars are supposed to be loudmouths.

By Jenny Shank
Apr 22, 1999

Gomez is an up-and-coming English rock group, but its members don't act like it. Their clothes aren't terribly exciting, their music doesn't "shimmer," "jangle" or "pulsate" from the speakers of a dance club near you, and they resist the urge to tell the press that their British peers are either...
Playlist

By Michael Roberts, Joshua Green and Jenny Shank
Apr 1, 1999

TLC FanMail (La Face) Production is often used as a coat of paint that's slapped on to disguise the inferiority of the song beneath it; scrape it off, and what's left can be mighty frightening. But on other occasions (like this one), unfathomably expensive studio techniques can have a fascination...

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