Have you ever started following a band, not because you were their biggest fan right away, but, because the group seemed to bear enormous potential that you hoped they would eventually realize? You found yourself following them, hoping they'd get the change to get...
As Tragically Hip singer Gord Downey once said, the problem with cutting out a living in the arts (particularly in music) is that, as soon as you subscribe to one discipline, all of the others look that much more attractive. Actors want to make music (as exemplified by...
I’ve come to the realization that I listen to well over 100 albums each year, dear readers. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but having to sift through the utter sea of shit that qualifies as music these days in order to bring you the highlights...
No one likes a show-off. I know that’s certainly the case for me and, in addition to a certain lack of patience, I have a low tolerance for people’s bullshit. This general sense of impatience isn't something I'm proud of (because, come on –...
What's a band to do when, as the ink dries on a brand new record contract, its members realize that have very little in the way of fresh material for use on a new album? Raid the B- and C-side content in the vault and assemble an album from those previously...
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, “Huh? Lynyrd Skynyrd – that band responsible for writing a song which has become the butt of the most enduring joke in the rock book, that band who told Neil Young where to go in one of their other...
Imagine, for a moment, an alternate universe where Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin, Charlotte Caffey, Kathy Valentine and Gina Schock had been born in stately Ukraine rather than Los Angeles and, rather than journeying down to the beach and discovering fame and fortune...
There aren't many people that would argue Three Days Grace had an easy trip up a very crowded street when they first appeared in 2003. At that time, an angry band whose muse was centered in an angry and resentful place had it made and it didn't hurt that Three...
The romantic image that most music fans tend to harbor when they think about the process of making a new album is always the same: even the most social of bands will retire to comfortable studio confines after a regimen of touring and songwriting, where they'll...
The process of deconstruction – of values, of style, of established forms, of any number of aesthetics – can be a very salacious thing when done well and with a bit of foresight. Simply ripping shit up arbitrarily before gluing it back together and...