SHEELA ROXXX

Dear editors , please find enclosed , as review-mailing , the third CD of german rockband "Sheela". We have tried hard to give you as many liner-notes as possible. To every album-title you get informations relating to formation, content, handicraft and even little production-anecdotes. Almost all the lyrics are printed in the booklet and the music speaks for itself.

Thus began the press package (quirky punctuation faithfully reproduced) from Sheela, a German band fimly stuck in the late '80s of American hair music. We're talking Van Halen meets Extreme. Or maybe I shouldn't try to classify their music like that. As the press package goes on to explain:

Concerning the style, the SHEELA-spectre was between blues-inspired material and an assortment of more rocky components of the Hard & Heavy-Scene-- the band consequently refused comparisons with other bands, to avoid to be put too early into a box and to be able to use musical influences without prejudice. Anyway, the question should be allowed where the is more melting-pot nowadays in the world: in New York -Tokio or Frankfort, where SHEELA comes from!! SHEELA-songs often include mainstream hooklines, but will surprise even hardliner musician colleques by the high-class of the arrangement. Convince yourself, while listening to the band's first album, entitled "Burned Down", which was a big success in Japan. SHEELA like good choirs and they are for shure, one of the leading groups in the european territory!

Burned Down was not included, but the band's latest effort, the enigmatically named Straight Hearted Ones, was. I set about convincing myself of Sheela's love for good choirs. What I heard instead was one of most unintentionally funny CDs of all time. The first whiff of lyrical pleasure on the first song, "Again Now," had me rolling on laughing gas: "I want you-- I want you to share / your private thoughts with me again / Spit it out-- spit it out-- spit the words right out of your mouth." Ptooey!

By the time "Power," the album's second track, borrows the classic hip-hop line "It's gettin'-- it's gettin'-- it's gettin' kinda heavy" in the midst of Scorpions-style balladry, nobody was left alive. This seemingly innocuous little album (complete with a concert picture in the liner notes featuring the most bored crowd to ever grace a concert picture) was actually a weapon of mass destruction. The Germans invade again.

The packet was emphatic that we promote the band's Colorado tour date, so here it is kids: you can catch Sheela live and in concert at the Buffalo Rose, August 12, 2000. Not a typo. Maybe they should have sent the thing FedEx.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not mocking European bands in general. Obviously, there are scads of European musicians who have influenced the global music scene, started marvelous trends in pop and metal (needless to say goth), and made the world a better place. Sheela, however, is not one of those bands.

This blurb is meant to do more than mock. It's meant to educate. Local bands: when preparing your press package for foreign magazines on that initial European tour, avoid sending pictures that may be construed as dumb by the locals (see above), never include press clips in unintelligible foreign tongues, and always always always spend the extra money on a credible translator.

PROPAGANDA!

This flyer was helpfully left at a friend's door. We reprint it here as a very important press release, one that Just Might Save Your Life.

State of Emergency: There currently exists a STATE OF WAR against the American people. Declared by an international "elite," orchestrated by the NSA (National Security Agency, Fort Mead, MD). It is a "quiet" war fought with silent weapons, electronic in nature:

HAARP-- weather modification, earthquakes, Global electronic brain stimulation.

Remote Neural Monitoring EBL-- cellular arrangment of receive/ transmit devices for monitoring human EEG, and transmitting Electronic Brain Link, interfaced with optical computer scans every person's thoughts and modifies per programming.

Ground Wave E Network-- series of towers bisecting U. S. E-W transmitting 4-50 H2; Electronic Brain Stimulation.

MIROS-- Network of satellites, onboard Modulated Electron Gun X-Ray Nuclear Booster, Electronic Brain Stimulation Anti-Personnel laser, sterilization, Death Ray.

All systems operating 24 hrs. a day-- automated cybernetics, all ACTS OF WAR ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. Every person in the U. S. has been "robotized" (keep in mind as you read, RNM; passivity, disbelief, confusion).

Tyranny is not disposed of by logical argument or dealmaking. It must become uncomfortable and uprofitable for new world order. Action is necessary. Boycotts, computer hacking, monkeywrenching, dirty tricks, tesla earthquake machine. Take away the profit. Revolting is as American as the 4th of July. And necessary to save our lives. As our own Declaration of Independence proclaims: "When a long train of abuses and usurpations envinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government." Fighting individually, using geurilla tactics. There is no target for NSA we have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

You must fight-- to be human again. Ref: Mind control-- World Control-- Jim Keith Nexus (magazine) April-May 1996, Vol. 3, Issue 3.

All programs directed by Airforce. Airforce is enemy.

If you "think" you can forgive new world order and "choose" not to fight you don't deserve the title of human being, you are a maggot. It will "tell" you not to be angry, you should be in an outrage!!!!!!

RAMPANT MATERIALISM

Hi Chris, I enjoy your magazine, although I'm a bit out of your target demographic (I'm 44). I agree with your comments about the 10 pm parking meters [ www.gogomagazine.com/0305/ editorsdesk.html]. It seems to be just another example of separating people from their money any way possible (additional examples are taxpayer financed sports palaces, $250K average house prices, etc), and the rampant materialism that seeems to get worse in Denver every year. Keep up the good work. --Terry via e-mail

We have a target demographic? Just remember, Terry, the best way to fight rampant materialism is to pick up free papers and read them, for free. Then, when we're done brainwashing our target demographic with our Electronic Brain Stimulation Anti-Personnel laser, Denver's rampant materialism will be directed toward people who deserve it-- our advertisers. (What was that ch-ching noise?)

--Chris J. Magyar