NEWSLETTER

GOD BLESS THE WEST Dave Eggers & Lucy Thomas Capture an Ethos No one cares about the Old West. There was a time when people cared, but that was 1988. That is when everyone stopped caring. The Old West was a time before people danced in unison on awards shows, and this is part of the difficulty many of us have with the Ol...READ MORE

BEATS AND RHYMES I write reviews, and when suckers bite, I laugh, cuz their shit sounds better now. One of the most prolific cats in the game, your man MF Doom, has a gang of new projects in the works. Check for a collection of doomstrumentals, Special Herbs Vol. I & ...READ MORE

OLDER THAN COELACANTHS Trilobites and Their Endotoxic Reagent The horseshoe crab is as old as the dinosaurs. Its blood is an essential ingredient in everyday medicine, and yet we know so little about it. The horseshoe crab, or Limulus Arthro-podus, is a living cousin of the trilobite, a marine arthropod that scu...READ MORE

DEAR DIARY Entry: September 12, 1995 Dear Diary, I tripped on acid for the first time last night. Really strange. At first I was really confused and PARANOID, it was really bad. The visuals were insane. Colors all melting and stuff. ...READ MORE

CHUG CHUG CHUG Jay Kaplan Documents the Shotgun As a means of breaking down walls in the video-art medium and getting people wasted on camera, New York artist Jay Kaplan has created The Ultimate Challenge, a series of four shotgunning tasks that begins with the eight-ounce "pony can" of Bud and culminates i...READ MORE

ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE Germany's historical contributions to western music have been, at the very least, crucial. From the titillating complexity of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" to the futuristic drone of Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express," the krauts have changed the way w...READ MORE

THE MERITS OF WAR Two Intellectuals and a Drunk Give the Final Word At Brooklyn's GreenPoint Tavern, the conversations range from Polish rants about the problems "viss de niggers" to giggling college-girl arguments about cherry Chapstick. There is a perfect 50/50 split between pathetic old drunks with huge birth defects (re...READ MORE

VICE FASHION - READY TO DIE Ryan is eighteen and lives in Virginia. He joined the infantry in June of 2002 after some seniors in his high school had done the same. You have to get your parents' approval when you're under eighteen. He did. He was working one weekend a month in the reserve...READ MORE

SADDAM SUCKS But That's My Problem Hello, everybody. I am a busty Iraqi girl who escaped to New York with her wealthy parents seven years ago. I thought I'd take a little time out of my incredibly boring school day to tell you about the man you call "the most evil dictator of all time" (you thi...READ MORE

GAMES The Getaway & Vietcong THE GETAWAY Right, then. The first thing you should probably know about this game is that it has nothing to do with the Sam Peckinpah & film of the same name. Too bad, cuz that would have ruled. The next thing you should know is that no matter how ...READ MORE

WHO PUT THE H IN COUNTRY? A Few of Our Favorite Fuck Ups Sid Vicious was a woman's blouse. You know him as a punk legend who couldn't play bass and used to cut himself on stage and got hooked on junk and stabbed his girlfriend and then OD'd a few months later on some dope his mom bought him. But let's face it: The g...READ MORE

LITERARY Book Reviews - The West Is The Best Issue Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal, The Fourth Sex: Adolescent Extremes, Ignore The Spread: Four Years of Horrid NFL Picks...READ MORE

BLISSED OUT Devendra Banhart and Entrance Take the Edge Off Devendra Banhart looks like a dreamy-eyed sheep, his long sideburns curled around a chin drawn square as he howls tiny-speaker vocals over a death-rattle guitar. Hardly a shaman, not nearly a Lomax-purist, Banhart is more a psychedelic troubadour who projects ...READ MORE

MY AMERICA By the time this is finally published and placed in the little bucket that houses magazines and "funny" books next to your toilet, Valentine's Day will be long past. As I write this, however, it hasn't taken place yet, and to be honest, I'm kind of looking for...READ MORE

& STONED Fursaxa Inhales the Bad and Exhales the Good When I was TWELVE, there was this golden moment when I realized The Grateful Dead were not another awesome band with mind-blowing extended jams, far-out mascot skeletons and dancing bears. They were, in fact, shit. The universal symbol for lame stoner doods wi...READ MORE

NOT FIT TO PRINT Running a magazine is like running a culture gauge where people from all over the Western world send you things that they think other Westerners will enjoy. Unfortunately, instead of reveling in the great works of our people, we end up petrified of our enti...READ MORE

WHAT The Fuck Is Up With the Jazz Bagpipe Scene? Rufus Harley is maybe the most eccentric jazz player of all time, not least for his chosen instrument, the bagpipes. He played with Coltrane, gave lessons to Muhammad Ali, guested on The Cosby Show, and played the White House, but now he lives in Philadelphia ...READ MORE

VICE PICTURES The West Is The Best Issue Photos by Anthony Iamurri In 1968, eighteen-year-old Anthony Iamurri was shipped to Vietnam from Seventh St. and Morris Ave. in South Philadelphia. During his tour of duty, which included frontline combat experience (yes, he was in "the shit"), he sent t...READ MORE

GET OFF THE STAGE Friends Forever Are Playing in the Parking Lot Sometimes the best thing about a show is hanging out in the parking lot, right? I mean, how many hardcore shows have I gone to where the only thing going on inside was a bunch of sweaty dudes from Long Island going through the moshpit motions? And how many "ar...READ MORE

TIDBITS A Monthly Look At Things We Love - The West Is The Best Issue 1 NUT BUSH Ever wonder why you cum more often when your boyfriend fucks you upside down? The reason is friction. His bag is banging against your clit so much it gives you what we call "nut bush," and that stimulation is what brings you to orgasm. I...READ MORE

IT'S GOT A GOOD BEAT BUT YOU CAN'T DANCE TO IT Institut Fuer Feinmotorik Drop the Record on the Needle Techno has sucked for years now, but what's the best way to kill and reinvent the genre? Rip the records off the turntable and just play the fucking slipmats! The Institut Fuer Feinmotorik, a group of four German men, have been doing it for years, and it sound...READ MORE

JUVENILE HELL Queensbridge Rapper Littles Is the Original Baby Gangsta Out here on the East Coast, all MCs want to do is get signed. It's like a race to see which sucker is going to be the next Fabolous. Our man Littles, however, would turn down just about any record deal. First he stole the show on the last two Mobb Deep project...READ MORE

JUVENILE HELL Feeling Bad About the Past? Invent a Little. Next time one of your friends says to you, "Why do I keep dating assholes?" you can tell her, "Your dad was a huge asshole who was incapable of showing love. You keep dating these douche bags hoping that you can make them love you, thus repairing the lifelong ...READ MORE

YOU CAN TAKE THE BOY OUT OF THE THEATER But Can You Take the Man Out of the Boy? Chicken Hawk: Men Who Love Boys is one of the sickest documentaries you'll probably never see. Made in 1994, it's a look inside the world of NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, an organization that purportedly exists as a "political and educat...READ MORE

HOT, EURO & GAY Toxic Girls Is This Period's Greatest Compilation Hey, so you know Jessica? That hot Dutch dyke with the Nico voice who puts out Kutt Magazine? Yeah, her. She's so hot, every little hipster lezzie in New York is totally sweating her. I think Kutt's a pretty good mag, except that it was supposed to be...READ MORE

EXPLODING MILKSHAKES The Acid's On Ceephax Trends in electronic music come and go, but the mercurial bubble and squelch of good old acid has remained a permanent fixture since day one. Ceephax Acid Crew's self-titled debut album, out this month, is the finest straight-up acid record we've heard in year...READ MORE

GETTING THE FEAR Kraut Miserabilists Make Everything Worse Can you feel it reaching for your throat? That threat of imminent annihilation. Tensing your muscles as you walk the streets and through the underground, head down, shoulders hunched, waiting to be poisoned by terrorist gas or blown to bits by a dirty bomb. Od...READ MORE

KILL THE FOXES Animal Rights Ain't Street Innit? British animal rights groups and rich people are always in a tizzy about country foxes, but it's their tough urban cousins, the city foxes, that are actually causing all the fuss. Hardened by a life where food is found by going through supermarket rubbish bins...READ MORE

PEACE OF PISS I Saw the Mayor of London Get Nasty on Jesse Jackson Don't get me wrong, I know the war is bad, but the anti-war march in London last month stank of piss. Sure, there were a lot of well-meaning people there who had a real understanding of the issues at stake, but to me, most people were just there to have a day ...READ MORE

RAVE ON STEROIDS Hardcore Techno That Kills Your Bowels When I was 14 the most fun I ever had was in a car park in Stoke. It was 1991 and hardcore rave fever gripped the nation. Whenever we could, my friends and I would travel to parties-indoors, outdoors; we didn't care-and proceed to get ripped on poppers and Ecs...READ MORE