Seeing The Descendents play sent me into an ecstatic orbit like only a few concerts have before. I had already been a fan of the band for a while by the time they reformed in 1996 and released Everything Sucks, but that record really connected with me; the band I...
There is no shortage of bands (and concertgoers) who complain about the truncated timelines associated with festival shows (they're tight and the sets are short – which guarantees that someone in the audience will say, “Gee – why couldn't they...
No matter how much buzz they might be generating at any given moment, you have to feel for the “baby band” on the bill of the biggest show of any multi-day, multi-stage music festival. It might be inconvenient to admit it, but the cards are inevitably...
At fifteen years old, I went to my first legitimate rock concert. It was at AJ’s Hanger in Kingston, Ontario and the bands were Rusty and Hhead. During the finale, headliner Rusty’s lead singer Ken MacNeil took a stage dive and landed on top of me. So I...
Signaling the non-official start to the Bay Area's outdoor Summer concert season, radio station Live 105 brought yet another "BFD" to the Shoreline Amphitheater earlier this month, and it proved to be one of their most diverse lineups yet. With three...
No matter how much buzz they might be generating at any given moment, you have to feel for the “baby band” on the bill of the biggest show of any multi-day, multi-stage music festival. It might be inconvenient to admit it, but the cards are inevitably...
Say what you will, but the Swingin’ Utters (in spite of their name) are an important band: they’ve put out some of the most seminal street punk albums (see the Scared sessions and Streets of San Francisco), and are probably responsible for the...
The Vans Warped Tour is set to kick off its seventeenth run across North America. This year’s edition will feature one of the festival's most diverse lineups with a roster that includes a mix of metalcore, pop punk and hip hop in addition to hardcore and good...
As a longtime Neil Young fan, I have always viewed his Eighties catalogue as "lost years.” Sure – there were some great moments ("T-Bone" on Re-ac-tor, "Sample and Hold" on Trans, "Wonderin" on Everybody's Rockin')...
In my mind, Bob Dylan's career really took off in 1965, when he strapped on an electric guitar and released Bringing It All Back Home. This is not just because I'm more of a rocker than a folkie, it's because his entire songwriting style changed at this...