Cultural Futures Exchange

This week CFX covers one of the most popular OLD movies ever, Grease. This classic 1970s/1950s musical about a bunch of high school SENIORS, with its mix of fun musical frivolity and MATURE subject matter, seems to have AGED well....or has it? We do the usual..going into the whole 1970s/1950s nostalgia that birthed the original stage show and eventually, thanks to the growing popularity of actor John Travolta, led to the blockbuste...

This week CFX takes you back to a simpler time, a time when bionically enhanced astronauts and former tennis pros saved the world from Bigfoot, aliens, Russian death probes and evil "robuts"—all while wearing fashion tracksuits and the finest fashions that the Sears Roebuck catalog had to offer. And doing it all in beautiful slow motion! That’s right, this week we are covering the very popular and successful mid-1970s show The Six ...

Well, we know where we’re going and we know where we have been. It may seem like we were on a road to nowhere with Talking Heads Part 1 since it’s been a while, but the future is certain because here we are with Part 2. We start things off with a bang, with 1980’s Remain in Light and then cover the Talking Heads’ most commercially successful years including their landmark concert film, Stop Making Sense. Then we cover their detour ...

This ain’t no party. This ain’t no disco. This ain’t no foolin’ around. This is CFX. Episode 56: Talking Heads and we get so “lovey dovey” that “we ain’t got time for that now”. That’s right,  we had to split this into two parts. In this first part, we go into our personal histories, the zeitgeist that created Talking Heads and a detailed history of the band. We also cover the bands’ 1970s albums, Talking Heads ‘77, More Songs abou...

Alright, internet! How y’all doing out there? You wanted the best and you got the best…stage banter that is. That’s right, this week we take a look at the best and worst stage banter in history for the first (and maybe only… we’ll see…) time. There’s no Grammy award for best stage banter and we attempt to rectify this grave oversight as a quasi-awards show that I guess you can call THE BANTIES! We start way back in the past and cov...

Are you there Judy? It’s us, CFX, and this week we are here to ask you, when will we grow? Haha, all kidding aside. That’s right, we are covering the great Judy Blume, an author who has influenced several generations with her frank, honest and realistic books for kids and young adults. We go into her history, highlighting a few of the books that are both her most notable and also most controversial. Of course, we talk about Are You...

Dearly beloved CFX fans, we are gathered here today to evaluate this thing called Purple Rain. Will it stand the test of time forever or just a mighty long time…well, we’re here to tell U. That’s right, we evaluate the film, the music and the artist (thankfully known as Prince which is good because I don’t know how to print that damned symbol…). What about the movie? Should U “dig” the picture or “smash” it? Is the music “sheer per...

When we first came up with the concept of the show, namely leveraging our pop cultural expertise to put cultural artifacts under the CFX microscope to see if they will stand the test of time, the short lived early ‘80s sitcom, Bosom Buddies, was one of the first shows we both thought of covering. Well, in episode 52, we do just that. We dig into not only the production history of the show, the before and after careers of all cast m...

This week CFX covers Warren Zevon, an artist that the general public, if they’ve heard of him at all, usually think of as a one hit wonder and associate him with one that song, “Werewolves of London”. As great as that song may be, CFX, as you’ve come to expect, digs deeper to discover the real Warren Zevon, the oftentimes frustratingly brilliant and brilliantly frustrating songwriter and musician’s musician who went from childhood ...

Part 2 picks up right where we left off on Part 1, by tackling the post-Moving Pictures journey of our Canuck music heroes. They’ve just experienced their greatest commercial success (artistic as well, at least according to CFX) to date and ready to fire the up the synths for some emotion transmission on 1982’s Signals. How do the next 11 albums over 30 years of the band’s studio recording history go down? Are they cool with their ...

ATTENTION PLANETS OF THE SOLAR FEDERATION! WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL! WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL! That's right, eh! This is the big one, episode 50, and so, it's time to grab a Molson Golden, don that kimono, and tuck into some poutine, because CFX are covering one of the all time greats, Canadian rock gods, RUSH. This is an episode so huge and magnificent, that we couldn't do it in one go, but had to split it in two. That's right, for ...

Teen archetypes! Melodramatic method-inspired soliloquies! Stepford Wives teen makeovers! Flaring nostrils! Hairy butt loving sportos! Quarterflash sound-alikes! And, who could forget… Neo-Nazi Zoom DWEEBIES?! If you’re wondering what we’re talking about, you’ve obviously never seen the 1985 classic John Hughes film, The Breakfast Club! We were bound to get to this one sooner or later and this week we do, diving into the history an...

This week CFX takes on the short-lived cult sci-fi show, Firefly. We dive into the history of the show, explore its eleven TV episodes and the 2005 fan-driven film Serenity to decide whether this oddball mix of western and space opera is “shiny” or just a whole lot of “Fei-oo”. What about this show made fans dress in space cowboy outfits, speak bad Chinese to each other, serenade Renaissance Faire crowds with Firefly-inspired balla...

This week CFX tackles one of the most popular and controversial books of all time, J.D. Salinger’s 1951 coming of age novel The Catcher in the Rye. This is a book that nearly everyone has read and we talk about how the book affected us when we read it as teenagers and how we view it now. We got into Salinger’s incredible life story, including his harrowing experiences in World War 2 and how his experiences influenced his writing an...

This week CFX celebrates St. Patrick’s Day by covering the greatest Irish band in history, Thin Lizzy! And if you consider that to be a controversial statement, we understand because as great as Thin Lizzy were, they weren’t nearly as popular as they should have been. Why weren’t they absolutely huge? Why wasn’t Phil Lynott, their charismatic leader and brilliant songwriter and bassist, a household name? Why did American FM radio b...

This week, the power of CFX compels you to listen to our second Satanic episode in a row! That’s right, for Episode 45, we take on 1973 horror classic, The Exorcist! Is this the greatest, most shocking horror film ever made or just a pile of pea soup colored puke? We answer this by digging into every detail of the incredible story of how this film was made, its impact at then and whether it still stands the test of time. And, as al...

This week CFX takes on the whole idea of Satanic music and the phenomenon of backmasking. Are rock artists intentionally hiding secret Satanic messages that are only revealed when the record is played backwards? And can our subconscious minds pick up on these messages somehow when the records are played forwards? We do a deep dive into the whole history of backmasking, the origins of Satan and God and all that and, of course, we go...

We’re back! And, this week, we take on the short-lived landmark cult comedy show, Strangers With Candy. This is an episode that really demonstrates, perhaps more than any other we have done, how the prospects of a CFX artifact can change so quickly. This show is only just a little over 20 years old and yet times have changed so dramatically, we can’t imagine it being made today. This is dark satire that crosses more than a few line...

Proud Mary! Lodi! Bayous! Prince Valiant Hairdos! Flannel! Lawsuits! Self-plagiarism! That’s right, this week, there’s a whole lotta chooglin’ goin’ on as CFX takes on Creedence Clearwater Revival, the short-lived, but critically and popularly acclaimed rock band helmed by American icon, John Fogerty. Is this band really all that great and does their music stand the test of time? Can we even call CCR a band? We get to the bottom ...