Author: zachary.hoskins@gmail.com

  • Dystopian Book Club Podcast: Peter Criss’ Makeup to Breakup

    Hey, Catfans! We’re now three-quarters of the way through the vanity-project-within-a-vanity-project that is our series of KISS memoir Book Club podcasts; and while it’s obviously too early to say for sure, we have a feeling that this month’s book was the peak. Makeup to Breakup, “written” in 2012 by original KISS drummer Peter Criss, has everything…

  • Dystopian New Year’s Party Podcast: Our Favorite Songs of 2016

    So we’re a few days late, but better late than never, right? Here, finally, is our annual New Year’s Party podcast, in which we summarize our favorite songs of the last year as we make way for the new one. It’s a little less self-indulgent than the first one from 2015–by which I mean that it’s only…

  • Dystopian Book Club Podcast: Ace Frehley’s No Regrets

    Our series of Book Club podcasts on the autobiographies of KISS continues with No Regrets, the 2011 memoir by the band’s original guitarist Ace Frehley. Listen to us talk about Ace’s propensity for driving under the influence and analyze the similarities and differences between his and Gene Simmons’ sides of the story–or, put another way, just…

  • Dystopian Halloween Party Podcast: Trick or Treat

    Just under a year ago, we launched our podcast with a special Halloween episode dedicated to 1987’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare. This year, the Dystopian Halloween Party podcast returns with another heavy metal horror flick: Trick or Treat from 1986, which does not star Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne, no matter what the DVD box tells…

  • Dystopian Book Club Podcast: Gene Simmons’ Kiss and Make-Up

    38 years ago this month, the four original members of KISS did the unthinkable and released four separate solo albums on the same day. Now, Dystopian Dance Party is following in their footsteps, and doing something even less thinkable: we’re reading all four KISS members’ autobiographies and recording our thoughts on them in a series…

  • Dystopian Video Game Party Podcast: 25 Years of Super Nintendo

    This week marks the 25th anniversary of the North American release of our favorite video game console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System; so here we are again to share our fuzzy, occasionally embarrassing childhood memories about the games we played when we could have been bettering ourselves or going outside. As usual, check below for…

  • Dystopian Movie Party Podcast: 30 Years Under the Cherry Moon

    Monday, July 4th marked the 240th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence; more importantly, however, it also marked the 30th anniversary of the release of the second and most underrated feature film starring Prince, Under the Cherry Moon. Today, in what will (probably) be our last Prince-related podcast of 2016, we talk about why we…

  • Jheri Curl June: Scritti Politti’s “Boom! There She Was”

    The last post of Jheri Curl June is always a bittersweet one to write. On the one hand, there’s the satisfaction of knowing we have another solid month’s worth of writing about classic 1980s R&B under our belts; but on the other, there’s the sense of emptiness that comes when we realize we have to…

  • Jheri Curl June: Dan Hartman’s “We Are the Young”

    Few artists exemplify the ability of jheri curl music to cross racial boundaries like Dan Hartman. This is a man who started his career as a sideman for the literal whitest musician of all time, Edgar Winter, and went on to co-write and produce for one of the Blackest, James Brown. So it should come as…

  • Jheri Curl June: Madonna’s “Lucky Star”

    Look, I know we called this final week of Jh3ri Curl Jun3 White Boys’ Week, but I think we would be remiss to talk about jheri curl music’s appropriators without a shoutout to the anointed queen of all swagger-jackers: Madonna. Almost a decade before she brought a sanitized version of Harlem drag ball culture to Middle America…