THE TAMBOUREENS

The band’s music is rooted in ’50s Motown and ’60s pop, a fact made more remarkable when you consider that The Tamboureens are all in their teens or early 20s. But there is also a city-smart rock vibe to it, a wink that makes it not a joke or a gimmick, but something more self-aware than you’d expect from a bunch of kids playing a style of music that is 40 to 50 years their senior.

It’s either Zombies music pumped through a Strokes filter or vice versa. It’s hard to tell
which, and it doesn’t matter much anyway. The issue at hand here is that The Tamboureens
have a singular sound, an airtight delivery, a finely tuned image and so much potential it’s scary.

They’ve also got lots of energy – I couldn’t even tell you how many times we made the poor boys jump up and down during this month’s cover shoot. Guitarist Jeff Metz, Jr., rocked out so hard playing air guitar for the camera that he actually broke a string. We’re still not sure how that happened. Read more about The Tamboureens in this month’s Music Spotlight.

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We also spent some quality time in June with those other boys of summer, Cylo, DownTown and Rascal – better known as the mascots of Central PA’s minor league baseball teams. You’ve seen them at ball games hugging kids, handing out T-shirts and messing with the umpires, but I’m willing to bet that you’ve never heard them speak before. And the reason I say that is because none of them can talk.

Against all odds, however, we managed to interview each of the furballs. Check out this month’s profile to see which mascot thinks he could take the others in a fistfight, which recently celebrated his 200th birthday and which is … a river monster with his own pet dog? Um, yeah.

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To top off the issue, we decided to try our hand at “Guitar Hero,” the latest barroom entertainment craze. Initially, we were thinking about assigning the story to the ever-intrepid David Onda, but then he explained that he had never played “Guitar Hero” in his life, not even at a friend’s house. So that’s when we knew we were giving him the story for sure.

As Onda found out, even if you’re not a gamer, “Guitar Hero” is worth trying. And even if you’re not a reader, it’s worth checking out his article just to see by how many people and in how many ways he got his ass handed to him that night.

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