ON THE COVER Influential noise rockers Sonic Youth had just started breaking into the mainstream, and few would have predicted that they’d help break Nirvana and kick-start grunge not quite a year later. As their later tour documentary would claim, 1991 was indeed the year that punk broke. Page 16.
IN THE NEWS The democratic revolution now gripping the Arab world was heralded 20 years ago by local Iraqi novelist Ibrahim al-Hariri, who was fasting for peace in T.O.’s Glen Rhodes United Church while U.S. and coalition forces invaded Iraq in the first Gulf War. Arabs, he said, were paying the price of a militarism imposed on them by dictators, obsolete monarchs and a self-serving superpower. Page 8.
IN THE ADS Barenaked Ladies were a ragtag band of fun-loving unknowns still playing tiny clubs. The evidence? This ad for Ultrasound Showbar. Page 26.
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