Tag Archives: grey factor

Music

Top 5 Beatique Stories of 2025 (So Far)

Mike Meyers So I Married an Axe Murderer coffee House screenshot
Mike Myers in So I Married an Axe Murderer ordering a ’90s coffee house cappuccino

For a good while, Beatique was just a personal blog where I would post my playlists, updates on gigs and the occasional story. In January, I figured I should turn it into a regularly updated music and culture blog that’s still very personal. Now that we’re near the middle of the year, I’m happy to say that the project is going well. There are new posts most weekdays. Interviews are a regular feature, with at least one running every week. There are also album and live reviews, event recaps, record store spotlights and the occasional rant. 

Not to brag, but even I’m a little shocked that I’ve been able to post that much in between working two jobs, one of which involves a lot of writing, without using AI. It’s actually because journalism is my day job that I started putting some actual effort into the blog. Music, arts and culture journalism— which has been my beat for my entire career— is in a dismal place. It’s not just that I missed getting the music and alt culture assignments that never really came back after lockdown, but I missed reading stories that aren’t about the World’s Most Boring pop star and TikTok hits. Basically, I’m writing what I want to read, so thanks for joining me on the ride. If you want to stay up-to-date, sign up for the new mailing list. Newsletters will go out on Thursdays beginning this week and it’s free. The only thing I’m adamant about with this project is that there will be no subscriptions or paywalls.

Please share what you like, whether it’s on socials or just directly with your friends. I’m not interested in the quantity of readers so much as the quality of them, so if you know someone who is all like, “I’m really tired of paywalls on stories about social media posts,” then send them this way. 

I debated whether or not I should post the Top 5 stories of the past six months because I don’t want to judge a story by how much traffic it gets, but I think these five stories are also reflective of what you’ll find here and what I have in store for the future.

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Interview

Flashback to 1980s L.A. with Grey Factor on Live Album, A Peak in the Signal

Jeff Jacquin and Joey Cevetello of Grey Factor (Photo courtesy of the band)
Jeff Jacquin and Joey Cevetello of Grey Factor (Photo courtesy of the band)

When first wave L.A. synth band Grey Factor originally played around town, it was the junction of the 1970s and 1980s, an era when synths were more cumbersome and complicated than they are today and local audiences weren’t totally sold on electronic music. 

Back then, Jeff Jacquin and Joey Cevetello, the core of the group, and their bandmates lugged analog gear into punk clubs. Sometimes, they brought their own soundboard as well. Cevetello carried pieces of paper with charts showing how all the knobs on the synthesizers should be arranged. Their stands were repurposed shelving units. 

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The Playlist

Here Are My Top 10 Albums of 2023

Composite of album covers for top 10 albums of 2023 from DJ Liz O. Includes cover images for Taleen Kali Flower of Life, Grey Factor, 1979-1980 A.D., Optometry After-Image, Decisive Pink Ticket to Fame
Included in my top 10 albums of 2023 are (top row) Taleen Kali “Flower of Life,” Grey Factor “1979-1980 A.D.” (bottom row) Optometry “After-Image,” Decisive Pink “Ticket to Fame”

I don’t know if the annual “best of” lists are necessarily fair. There is still a virtual pile of 2023 albums on my Bandcamp wishlist and running list in my head of albums that I need to hear. There are likely new albums from bands I follow that I don’t know about because, well, you know how social media works these days. Then there are the albums and bands who aren’t even on my radar, but will be next year, or the year after that, or maybe a half-decade down the line. Still, I made a list of my top 10 albums of 2023 that include music you may have heard in my DJ sets IRL, on Mixcloud or a few of the radio appearances I’ve done this year.

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