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There's a certain satisfaction to be had when, without really having to work hard to look for it, things just go right. Especially in the realm of pop music, such a charmed experience doesn't always happen easily; on any given day, any band can regale audiences...

The eternal tragedy of rock history is just how little mention The Stranglers get in any tome that talks about the punk and rock music which crashed out of the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. Bands like the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Buzzcocks always get ample...

It's incredible how much musical values can change depending on what genre a band gets classed under. Obviously retro styling is almost universally abhorred in pop unless such trappings are used to instill a sense of irony, while rock tends to revere them. In punk,...

It’s a special moment in one’s life when a band “changes the game” for a listener. By “changing the game,” of course, I mean opening their ears to a new genre. Drag The River did this for me and country music approximately eight...

It has been said several times over that the best way to interview Mike Watt is ostensibly introduce yourself, ask your first question and let the tape run. The bassist doesn't so much 'interview' as 'spiel' everything one could possibly need to...

It has been said just often enough at this point that it could be taken as gospel: “Necessity is the mother of invention” but no one truly revels in that sentiment more than Mike Watt. First as the bass player for The Minutemen and then as the bassist in fIREHOSE,...

Jim Morrison once said that some of the best songs (and many of those that The Doors wrote) focused on the themes of love, death and travel – or a combination of the three. When one stops to think about it, there is a grain of truth in the notion; love and death...

As much as common wisdom might dictate that the best way for a pop star to rejuvenate his or her career is by re-inventing or recasting themselves in a different light or with a different focus, such traditions still don't explain David Bowie. Since first appearing...

It's been thirty-one years since the band broke into the mainstream and thirty four years since Debbie Harry walked out of Max's Kansas City  and onto the stage at CBGBs and in that time enough static mythology and reductive history has been written that...

It's been a pretty incredible year for Patrick Watson. Just eight months ago, the singer exploded onto the international radar with the beautifully abstract and orchestral Wooden Arms and when it hit, the rollercoaster ride started. Kudos flew fast and furiously,...