Muntadhar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi TV reporter who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad last December, was released from prison on September 15…
Robert Cass
197 Articles
Robert Cass lives in Chicago. For Popdose he's written under the Sugar Water, Bootleg City, and Box Office Flashback banners and collaborated on the series 'Face Time with Jeff Giles and Mike Heyliger.
Robert Cass
1 Min Read
Who doesn’t love The Wizard of Oz? (That was a rhetorical question. Put your hands and middle fingers down.) Last week in Bootleg City, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of…
Robert Cass
2 Min Read
Yesterday was a special day in Bootleg City. Every September 10 — or “One After 909,” as some folks call it — we celebrate Beatle Day, which kicks off early…
Robert Cass
4 Min Read
Hey, y’all. Matthew McConaughey here, fillin’ in for Mr. Mayor of Bootleg City this week. Cassanova gave me a jingle-jangle the other day and said, “Matty Mac, do me a…
Robert Cass
3 Min Read
“In the style of the boy-band vocal bands of the time, Human Nature became Australia’s most successful pop group of the ’90s and beyond,” according to their Allmusic.com biography, “outselling their…
Robert Cass
3 Min Read
I was dead asleep when the phone rang. It was three o’clock. I picked it up and mumbled hello. I figured it was my ex-wife. She calls late at night…
Robert Cass
3 Min Read
Four years ago GRP/Verve released Best of George Benson Live, recorded at a concert the veteran jazz guitarist and singer gave in Belfast, Ireland, in 2000. The set drew mainly…
Robert Cass
1 Min Read
Maxwell. Boston. Free Priority Access tickets. Need we say more? Click to enter the contest from Popdose, Samsung, and AT&T!
Robert Cass
5 Min Read
It’s rare that I get a chance to talk to the artists whose music I steal each week, so when the opportunity arises I seize it. Recently, word got out…
Robert Cass
3 Min Read
Sequels! Adaptations! Ill-advised remakes! It’s gotten so it’s hard to tell what’s a real movie in development and what’s a story in The Onion — and that’s where our quiz comes in.
Robert Cass
3 Min Read
For this special edition of Bootleg City, I’m spotlighting the top 17 songs of the ’90s, a decade we can all officially start nostalgicizing on January 1, 2010. Until then…
Robert Cass
2 Min Read
I was beginning to think I’d never find a tough lawman to clean up Bootleg City, especially after my faux pas-filled interview with Marshall Crenshaw. (I won’t bore you with…
Robert Cass
3 Min Read
When the economy’s bad, crime gets worse. That’s why I decided to hire a new lawman to clean up this one-horse-because-of-all-the-horse-thieves town. I know what you’re thinking: “It’s called Bootleg…
Robert Cass
1 Min Read
The budget cuts continue in Bootleg City. This week I had to lay off the village idiot. It was a tough call. On the one hand, he’s provided countless hours…
Robert Cass
4 Min Read
“We’ve kinda found that people really dig one record of ours or another, and then kinda want that version of Wheat to be the one that they always get,” said…
Robert Cass
4 Min Read
I’m not going to lie to you — even though I’m the most powerful figurehead in Bootleg City, I don’t have all the answers. That’s why I often turn to…
Robert Cass
2 Min Read
Last Saturday I discussed the global economic woes that have trickled down to many American cities in the past year, including Bootleg City. The recession has led to crippling budget…
Robert Cass
2 Min Read
Writer-director M. Brian King’s Night Train is a peculiar film. It’s a modern-day suspense thriller in which blood-splattered corpses pile up quickly, but it explicitly references 20th-century classics like John…
Robert Cass
2 Min Read
Happy Fourth of July, everyone! As the mayor of Bootleg City, it’s my responsibility to give you the best aural fireworks display money can buy, but therein lies the problem…
Robert Cass
2 Min Read
To celebrate/exploit the release of Varshons, the new covers album by Evan Dando‘s Lemonheads, Bootleg City is covering its own covers-filled edition from July 27, 2007. Of course, back in those…
Robert Cass
3 Min Read
The Lemonheads’ new album, Varshons (The End Records), kicks off with Gram Parsons’s “I Just Can’t Take It Anymore,” in which the resigned, lovelorn protagonist declares, “Well, we could’ve done…
Robert Cass
3 Min Read
Here are some fun facts about singer-songwriter Jules Shear: 1. He’s from Pittsburgh. So is actor Jeff Goldblum, who stars in the pseudo-documentary Pittsburgh (2006), which chronicles his homecoming performance in…
Robert Cass
1 Min Read
In part two of this flashback edition of Vin Scelsa’s Live at Lunch, singer-songwriter Jules Shear talks about the R&B inspiration for “If She Knew What She Wants,” how he…
Robert Cass
2 Min Read
As the mayor of Bootleg City, it’s good to be king — or just mayor, I guess. Or how about “king-mayor”? But certainly not Sonia Sotomayor, who dared to suggest…
Robert Cass
2 Min Read
It’s been more than 25 years since Vanessa Williams became the first black Miss America. But when nude pictures of the former photographer’s assistant were published without her consent in Penthouse…