Around the Voice: Dum Dum Girls' Past Gets Unwrapped

I Will Be reluctant to answer questions about my past

​Every week, we gather some interesting stuff from our sister Village Voice Media publications' music sections. Just for kicks. Here's last week's entry.

Owl City has a song called "Hello Seattle" and Seattle Weekly likes that fact.

The story behind Sonny Smith's 100 Records, an exhibit of fake album covers, resides in the SF Weekly.

LA Weekly's Chris Martins does a strong bit of investigative reporting in his profile of Dum Dum Girls frontwoman Dee Dee, AKA ex-Grand Ole Party's Kristin Gundred.

Even Erykah Badu gets starstruck during a conversation with the Dallas Observer:

"That's Horshack!" she screams with glee. "That's Arnold Horshack! I just saw Arnold Horshack from Welcome Back, Kotter! Just walking  down the road! On Park and 34th!"

In Village Voice, Rob Harvilla's always-mesmerizing prose regarding Badu's even-more-mesmerizing New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh,   Rich Juzwiak pulls no punches regarding Usher's newest release, Raymond v. Raymond:

Perhaps this show-and-no-tell is Usher lying to us to re-energize his career. Perhaps it's something more diabolical, a smoke-and-mirrors exploitation to dupe those who care too much about his personal life into buying music that barely mentions it. Either way, he's too occupied to explain: Raymond mostly explores its hero's status as a gay divorcé (no homo, as far as we can tell).

Riverfront Times hosts a fun look back at Tegan and Sara's 1999 hairstyles before digging into the Sainthood goodies, and a round-up of Cheap Trick's activity during South by Southwest with a Q&A with Robin Zander and Rick Neilsen.