Potpourri and Roses

SOMETHING LIKE A MISSION STATEMENT

It's not every day someone holds in their hands an epiphany. But bless your heart, that's what you're doing. Potpourri & Roses is the result of my love of music and my love of writing and my desire to fool my parents into thinking I'm doing something productive. I had entertained the thought of doing my own 'zine before, but while at a show that stirred my soul, something like a stray musical note from perhaps one of my ancestors drifted up to me and flicked me in the head. Within minutes, the blueprint for this was jotted down on a cookie wrapper.

The bands contained within these pages all have one thing in common. They're all party bands. If we have to live together on this ever-shrinking planet, we might as well learn to dance together. That's probably step one in residing in this multicultural age. If you think music isn't key in understanding other people's cultures, then you're just like your parents who call your music "noise pollution." Good tunes can meld generational & cultural gaps. Hey, if it's from Earth, it's all World music.

Some call it "Skunk." I always figured if I started a 'zine, it would focus on my prime love of current music, ska/punk. But that is hardly all I listen to, and hardly all that you, the reader and fellow lover of music, want to read about. Somewhere on the open roads of America, heritage hit me. Or perhaps I was driving too fast and I hit heritage. Believe me, it takes a lot of squeegeeing to get that off your windshield. In any event, I discovered that good music is good music, regardless of style, label or genre. If you just open your ears, be you rude boy, punk, yuppie, guppy, hippie, happy, lopsided, metalhead, Phish-head, hillbilly hick, ultra-rad slick, or even played the French Horn in your high school marching band, you know good music when you hear it. Musical styles I once thought were silly or the most brutal of all musical sins-- lame, no longer were unpalatable.

In my days as a college radio programmer, my show underwent many name changes. The first, "Tranquil Mountain," taken from the translation of my favorite fruit juice, wasn't aptly named for a punk show. "Secondhand Condoms," taken from my friends' hard rock band in St. Petersburg, Russia was too college radio. Then came "Brocc'N'Rolli" which stuck around for a while because it drew from my 2 faves, broccoli and rock'n'roll. Can I get a "Whooooa, Broccoli"? It's not that I limited myself to strictly punk and ska, because even Tom Jones and Kermit the Frog made appearances. But viewed as a tray from which I served my community, I see I left out some food groups. If they were to put me back on the airwaves, I'd call my show "Skaliflower & Other Assorted Vegetables." Not that I'm promoting broccoli's retarded cousin, but I remember a time when every ska band had to have those 3 letters somewhere in their name to let people know they were a ska band.

What are these other assorted vegetables? Within these soul tingling pages, you will be helped to delicious sides of swing, clumps of klezmer, tastes of tejano, pieces of polka (please see me for instructions on how to do the polka), zesty zydeco (what I would give for a beignet right now) & other helpings of worldly tunes. You see? Blues, hip-hop, reggae, pop, trance-hop, new wave, old wave, third wave, next wave. It can all be all good. And I'm here to try some "no thank you portions" of everything, to let you know which ones you might find tasty yourselves. Oh, & in case you hadn't noticed, I love food & will probably relate everything to it. Variety is the spice of life; it's all Potpourri & Roses.

-BRIAN BROCCOLI
info@b-rockmagazine.com
(6/29/98)