You may have missed it, but not too long ago Men's Health magazine released the results of a semi-scientific study that ranked America's saddest cities based on statistics such as suicide rates, unemployment rates and the rates of households using antidepressants.
No. 1 on the list is St. Petersburg, with neighboring Tampa trailing behind at No. 4. Surely this is bad news for real estate agents and not news at all for people who have lived in the area for a major portion of their lives.
"That's crazy, man," said Rahim Samad, who has lived in Tampa for 20 years, about the survey. "But I believe it."
The DJ, producer, emcee and independent film actor/producer has drawn heavily on the city's distinctive brand of grime for his first film, "Travel Properly."
Luckily, Tampa listeners have WMNF. It's a community-run, free-form radio station with more than 100 volunteer programmers.
Brigid Ochshorn, host of the overnight program "Freedom of Choice," has been curating a series of free outreach shows for the station at Cafe Hey in Tampa and Mojo Books and Music near USF.
Ochsorn also produces music as No Milk, a Cocteau Twins-esque solo project driven by programmed drum patterns.
It features nagging synth and ephemeral vocals layered in delay and effects.
But that's not the only good news for electronic music fans, with Josh Plotkin keeping busy running his startup label MORE Records out of Tampa.
The records are available at morerecords.org along with free streams of songs from the releases.
