At exactly 8pm, the Fillmore dims its house lights. Apparently, the pioneers of punk like to start things on time. Target Video begins its tribute film, an appropriate way to kick off the evening. Grainy, vintage, black and white concert footage of The Nuns, Noh Mercy, Iggy Pop and Dead Kennedys flashes across the screen. Crude and intense, the video is like moshing down memory lane for the older audience members. For the youngsters (i.e., anyone born during/after the 1980s),...
For a musician that has, in times and confines passed, been known to take as many as five years to follow up a record, that Trent Reznor has released four albums of material (three of all-new songs and one remix disc) in only fifteen months doesn`t just say that the singer thinks he has something to prove, it screams it. Now freed from the confines of a major label, Reznor has elected to use his newest effort as the thing...
(This is part 2 of our coverage of the 2008 Rockstar Mayhem Festival. Part 1 can be viewed here.) After a couple of beers and chilling out for a bit, it was time to head back over to the Jägermeister stage again to catch one of the bands that I was really looking forward to seeing today, the Bay Area's own Machine Head. Standing in the photo pit in front of the stage with an endless sea of people behind...
Prepare for an absolutely horrible pun. Word on The Streets is (see, you were warned) Mike Skinner will be releasing the follow-up to 2006's The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living when Everything is Borrowed hits shelves on September 15th. In support of Everything is Borrowed, The Streets will spend much of October on the road through his native England. No further, non-UK tour dates have been announced yet, so either keep your fingers crossed or save up for...
At first blush, Ponytail's Ice Cream Spiritual sounds like an art school exploding. Chaos reigns – thunderous drums, insane guitars, and otherworldly screaming in gibberish from lead “singer” Molly Siegel. Everyone in the band seems to be playing a different song; guitar riffs pop up out of nowhere, repeat a few times, and then fade out, to be replaced by a different, totally unrelated riff a few moments later. You might not have noticed that, though, because there was another...
There is a fair amount of audacity in releasing a double disc collection of live music—one that stretches across six sides of 180 gram black vinyl. But audacity, the willingness to say “fuck it, let's do it,” has been a large part of the draw of the Fiery Furnaces. To release a record like this makes sense if you're Miles Davis, or if you've just recorded an all-star concert for Bangladesh—but like I mentioned, for the Fiery Furnaces, it is...
(This is Part 2 of 2 of our Rock The Bells festival coverage. You can view Part 1 here.) It was time for hosting duties to switch up. Supernatural was done for the day, and Cypress Hill's B-Real made his entrance singing the chorus to his group's “Hand on the Pump,” which not coincidentally featured heavily in the first performance from the duo he was about to announce. Blasting onto stage came Method Man & Redman, taking their cue from...
Every once in a while an opportunity to witness something incredibly unique and perhaps even give you a glimpse into the past to a time where you were most likely too young to go to shows, or, more likely, not even alive. Tonight in San Francisco, your chance to witness history is happening at The Fillmore: Pioneers of Punk San Francisco Bay Area 1976-1979, featuring Flipper, The Mutants, The Avengers, Negative Trend, Target Video 77 and MC Neil Hamburger. Now...
Murs almost didn't make the plane. My Rock The Bells adventure started long before I made it to Chicago. It started in the security line at the Long Beach Airport, when the courtesy announcements read a list of names—mine and few others, including one Nick Carter. Those of us listed named were in danger of missing the evening flight to Chicago. This was a problem on more levels than one, since Nick Carter is the birth name of rapper Murs...