It all started with a folding bicycle.

Former Talking heads frontman/musical savant David Byrne has been a long-time environmentalist, utilizing a trusty folding bike as his main means of getting around New York City.

Given the vast culture of professional football, there are a million intriguing personalities swirling in its orbit. Like referee Mike Carey.

Long before the recession had the denizens of Los Angeles rethinking the way they got around town, bicyclists had already carved out a particularly large niche in local culture. Especially in more community-friendly areas like Silver Lake and of course along the beaches, bikes are a ubiquitous sight around town, the horrendous and downright terrifying L.A. driving habits of notwithstanding.

It’s been a little while since Amanda Blank first hit the underground scene, stealing shows for fellow Philly artists like Spank Rock with her razor-sharp sex rhymes, streetwise style and captivating stage presence. But it’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll, so it’s taken longer than anyone imagined for Blank to drop her debut CD, “I Love You,” which finally hit the streets this week.

Given his zaftig physique and penchant for showing it off, L.A. freaky nightlife oddity/recording artist Har Mar Superstar has become something of a poster boy for cool kids that could be considered too fat for skinny jeans.

In the mid-‘90s, the already fertile house music underground was ignited by an emerging Chicago jock that called himself Sneak. Sampling the best bits from classic disco tracks, DJ Sneak began releasing a long string of these disco-fied house hits, which set off a new trend of mining the bottomless catalog of long-lost dance tracks. It was a deceptively simple idea that only a few artists would be able to master.

A somewhat random look at the summer of the NFL’s #1 draft pick, Matthew Stafford. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he was drafted by the Detroit Lions

Notorious for nominating more pioneering (and often relatively fringe) artists than the long-standing Brit Awards, 2009 finds Mercury rounding up a panoramic cast to round out this year’s nominations.

It would be easy to chalk it up to having to step up his game in light of being signed to vaunted indie label DFA. “Summer Song” was his first release on the label, and the man-machine stamp of post-punk dance mania is all over it.

Growing up in the Midwest in the ‘80s, it’s safe to say that most of my friends and I at one time or another definitely wanted to be Prince. Sure, there may have been dalliances with the idea of being Billy Idol or one of the guys in Duran Duran (John Taylor, generally), but it really all came down to the man from Minnesota.

Pissed Jeans is a band that sounds much as one would imagine. Bursts of overdriven, discordant punk noise narrated by throat-shredding screams of nihilistic discontent. But what makes Pissed Jeans more than just a Black Flag tribute band are the sardonic are often profound lyrics contain within those screams.

As Miike Snow the three have crafted a cool collection of ornate pop melodrama with a penchant for classic rock. “Sivia” is a perfect jumping-off point to explore the dazzling sonic dexterity of Miike Snow, which is poised to be among the finest debut albums of 2009.

In the tight fraternity of truly skilled rappers, few are as lyrically dexterous as Boston’s Mr. Lif. This seasoned veteran of the indie rap scene has released three socially conscious and politically charged albums. What’s less known about Lif is his lifelong love of sports.

What does surfing sound like? If you said the Ventures, you are absolutely correct. Dick Dale’s twangy guitar lines will forever represent the sound of riding waves and hanging 10.

But for the new surf flick “The Present,” Thomas Campbell has assembled an extremely panoramic and inspired selection of songs to accompany the gorgeous sequences of surfers like Dan Malloy…

Notorious for his role in the electroclash movement of the early ‘00s, Hell has never shied away from putting as much personality into his music as possible. It’s never been so evident as “Teufelswerk,” a sprawling double-disc set divided into discs labeled “Night” and “Day.”

Auto-Tune is far from dead, y’all. Not when you have the likes of Steve Porter running some of the most memorable sports press conference moments through Jay-Z’s least-favorite sonic software application to create this classic clip. Featuring Allen Iverson’s anti-practice rant, Dennis Green’s notorious explosion…

America is nothing if not the land of endless options. The idea is that any possible variation of, well, anything is available for a price. Case in point: whoever decided that “indie rockers” would respond to one of the saddest workout tapes this side of “Warm Up With Traci Lords.” Granted, the entertainment value of tatted-up girls with ratty hair and smudged eyeliner working up a sweat on a stage set that looks like a rock club is pretty high.

In 1983, most American sports fans were talking about the Washington Redskins winning the Super Bowl or their neighbors the Baltimore Orioles snagging the World Series pennant from Philadelphia Phillies in five games.

But all across Europe, the summer sports news was dominated by the annual Tour de France, won by local rider Laurent Fignon (who would go on to earn the yellow jersey again in 1984).

The members of German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk were among those rabid cycling fans…

It’s more than a little ironic that National Running Day (June 3) was only a couple of squares on the calendar away from National Donut Day (June 5) this year.

These diametrically opposed “Days” are the perfect metaphor for many modern Americans. The eternal struggle between sugary decadence and regular physical activity is one that’s waged on many fronts. From middle-school cafeterias to late-night drive-through runs, it would seem that the bad guys are winning in a landslide.