#volume21issue2

Campus Construction Okay, yeah. Make UVM great and all that. But we have one of the most beautiful campuses (campii?) in the nation and all we’ve seen for three years is giant backhos and cranes littering the landscape. Instead of grass, we have dirt, and instead of sidewalks, we have bike paths that people walk on. Not only is it ugly, it makes life so difficult–why should my walk from Lafayette to Votey take the whole twenty minutes between classes? That time is alotted for much worse treks, like from Dewey to L&L (quick shoutout to anybody who has been subjected to that, you guys are the real MVPs). Maybe one day this will all pay off, but I’m trying to reap the rewards, not make the world better for my kids or whatever. Screw future generations, I want my campus back.

new for fall

by Ivy Babson

by Sasha Rosen

From this interview, I felt that I could truly understand the detriments that the FDA has been warning us about all along. The effect of red dye causing hyperactivity has clearly been exemplified to the fullest in Preston. To my childhood classmates and the rest of the Red Dye-40 generation, I hope all is well. But this still doesn’t make up for all those lost cookies.

   Bad and Boujee is one of the worst songs ever created this year, but still, our generation idolizes the revolutionary rap group, Migos. The so-called ‘lyrical geniuses’ created this song earlier this year and it has unfortunately become a worldwide phenomenon. If anything, the only art that has come from this is the Bad and Boujee Superfreak Remix on soundcloud.    One of my friends said to me once when she was wilding out, drunk on Franzia box wine, at a party to this song, “I’m on Migos level three right now.” Honestly, I had no idea what that meant, until she started singing the ad libs that were blasting, full bass at the frat party we went to. That’s when I realized that, unfortunately, we all have a Migo deep inside our hearts. Migos differ in personalities like all friend groups do. Passive, out-going, bull-headed, the stoner, the one that does coke on a Wednesday night. They describe us all even if we don’t want them to.    Quavo is arguably the most well-known rapper of the trio and probably the most well-known friend in your group. He is loud, cool, out-going and he doesn’t necessarily scream random shit in the back of his songs, for example the word: cookie in Bad and Boujee. He isn’t annoying at first, but then you start to see that he is basically featured in every rap song that has come out this year. You think he is a good rapper, until his voice consumes every song on the Rap Caviar playlist on Spotify. Your world isn’t just Gucci Mane, or A$AP Rocky any longer, it's fucking Quavo Huncho now, bitch. Wikipedia describes him as a high school dropout that was good at sports, now he is famous and has taken over the rap community. In the real world if you are always turnt, are an aspiring sound cloud rapper, or are at every single social event even if you were not invited, then you are the Quavo of your friend group.    Offset is the more-passive person in your squad. He is that one person everyone thinks is really quiet and super nice, but is actually a freak in the sheets. Offset is the kind of friend that spends all kind of hours doing work on the third floor of the library, has a pet snake or hamster named George, but then smokes french rolled blunts and likes to drink jungle juice made with $10 Zhenka on a Thursday Night. Even though Offset is less famous than Quavo, he will always give you words of wisdom in times of trouble, for example, “rain drop, drop top”. Honestly if you posted this as an Instagram caption this year, you and Offset share common words of wisdom. If you are the friend that gives random wise advice, says random funny shit, is not as popular as your other friends and you have an inferiority complex, you are most definitely Offset.    Takeoff is your most annoying, irrelevant friend and is the one doing coke off of someone’s hand on a Wednesday night friend. If you can already tell, Takeoff is that friend. He is the one that you have to take care of at the end of your night out and can’t stop puking from the amount of mike’s hard he had. This rapper is most known for his random ad-libs in the back of each of the rap trio’s tracks. My favorite ad-lib of his is when he screams “skrt skrt” in most of their songs off of their album, Culture. This past summer, Takeoff was kicked off a flight because he refused to move his bag from the floor to the overhead bin. Clearly airlines can see how irrelevant he is too. If you have issues with authority or if you are someone that likes to scream random shit in a dark basement, at any event because you are, again, that friend, then you are definitely the Takeoff in your group of friends.    If you think these do not describe you, then it is time you look deep inside your soul and find your true Migo.

   Neil Young recently released his thirty-eighth studio album, Hitchhiker. The album is a return to form for Young; it’s mostly stripped-down acoustic folk with some nice harmonica fills. Running at only thirty-three minutes, it calls back to his shorter, acoustic-driven classics of the early days, like After the Gold Rush and Harvest.    Why does it sound so much like these classic albums? Probably because it was recorded around the same time as them. Hitchhiker was originally recorded in August of 1976, in the middle of Young’s heyday. Many of the songs were previously unreleased, but some like “Pocahontas” and “Powderfinger” appeared as live versions on the album Rust Never Sleeps and others like “Captain Kennedy”, “Campaigner”, and the title track, have versions on various other albums and compilations such as Decade and Le Noise. The only two completely unreleased songs on the album are “Hawaii” and “Give Me Strength”, but they fit right in as being both topical, emotional, and very Young.    After last year’s Peace Trail, it seemed like Neil Young making protest songs about basically everything shitty happening in the world (from Flint to police brutality to DAPL) as an old man in 2016 was the most Neil Young thing that Neil Young could do. It turns out, with Hitchhiker, he tops that. By releasing politically charged songs from the 70s that are somehow still relevant today, he accomplishes the most Neil Young thing possible. If you ever wanted references of Nixon and JFK to feel like they make sense in 2017, Young somehow makes that work.  It’s unclear whether or not this release was deliberated in order to show how America today is basically the same as the wild political climate of the ‘70s, but if Young intended to make that point, he hits the nail on the head.    Young also uses his unreleased recordings of old songs as an excuse to basically remind everyone who Neil Young is, in case they forgot. On “Hitchhiker”, originally released as an electric version on Le Noise, Young goes through a list of every drug he does while talking about hitchhiking, mentions driving a Buick, talks about having insomnia and being paranoid, touches on his love life, and ends the song by saying he wishes he was an Aztec or Inca. How much more Neil Young can you possibly get? This is where he sets himself apart from other folk singers in his league—he expands on the classic themes of being isolated and depressed on the road by throwing in some Native American references. He also does this on the emotional opener “Pocahontas”, where he laments on the genocide of Native Americans through a number of clear cut historical references but then ends the song by saying he wishes he could hang out with Pocahontas and Marlon Brando at the same time. Never change, Neil.    A highlight for me on this album is also one of Young’s most blatantly political tracks, “Campaigner”. Once I heard the refrain telling of a place where “even Richard Nixon has got soul”, I had a flashback to first hearing the original version on my dad’s copy of Decade, a three-disc compilation of some of Young’s best work. Placed right after the monolithic, one-of-the-best-guitar-solos-ever “Cortez the Killer”, “Campaigner” offers a stark contrast to the psychedelic tale of Cortez and Montezuma with a soft and acoustic anti-Nixon ballad. Really, those two tracks in sequence best represent the versatility of Young’s songwriting. On one hand there’s the Crazy Horse-collaboration, “godfather of grunge” Young, and on the other there’s the grandpa who lives alone in the woods and hates the government Young. Hitchhiker is a great addition to the albums fitting in the latter category, and is a good place to start for those looking to get more into Young’s lesser known material.

My neighbor’s cat’s litter box: Not very private but George seems to enjoy it. 0/10