It's incredible how, in just a few notes, an album take take a listener to a completely different place. It doesn't always happen – no matter how earnestly a band might try – but a few can do it. The Wave Pictures can do it effortlessly; without...
No venture in the music industry has the ability to pull the “big four” record conglomerates together quite like an awards show can, if only because such pageants bring out everyone's competitive spirit. Everyone wants to hold the biggest bag of marbles...
Alright so I know what you're thinkin'. You're asking, "Whaddaya doin' Don? Ya came early! You're not due to deliver another bag o' SWAG for a couple of days yet! Yer messin' up my rhythm." Yeah well, look at it this way –...
No matter what sort of relationship one might enjoy with other people (be it just a single individual or a group), in that moment when the relationship reaches a vintage of thirty years it is cause for a celebration. As anyone that has been married for a significant...
Once, there was a time when James Brown was called “The hardest-working man in show business.” The title was deserved; Brown was a notorious workaholic – sometimes playing as many as three hundred and thirty one-nighter shows in a year – and...
Creative focus is always an admirable trait in a musician, but sometimes a diversion is in order too – if only to fulfill a desire to do something a little different. Sometimes it happens because the players involved fear that they're stagnating creatively...
Ancient Chinese wisdom says that if one travels long enough and far enough, the traveler will eventuall meet himself in the future. Could the same be true of institutions? To date, rock n' roll has been an institution for fifty-nine years (almost to the day –...
At around one o'clock this afternoon, the wind got sucked from my lungs with four simple words. At one o'clock this afternoon, my wife/girlfriend/partner was sitting at the dining room table sorting through the news of the day when all of a sudden she stopped...
Even at the height of the band's powers in the mid-Nineties, Pavement was never allowed to stand on its' own two feet, autonomous from anyone else making music around the same time. They drew near-constant comparisons to other guitar-driven bands like Dinosaur...
“This is gonna replace CDs soon; guess I'll have to buy The White Album again…." – Tommy Lee Jones, Men In Black. The practice of bands and labels re-issuing material after it has reached a certain vintage isn't uncommon. In...