Given the nature of Rivers Cuomo’s previous raid of his own vaults which yielded the first installment of Alone, fans probably had a good idea of what to expect from Alone II – another collection of embryonic Weezer songs. That isn’t what Alone II...
There are a few things that have always characterized music as rock n’ roll since the day Ike Turner committed the thrill of joyriding around in a “Rocket ‘88” to tape: a lawless disregard for authority, a few rampaging and unhinged libidinous...
I have definite opinions of what makes a great rock concert. Take the same things that make great rock music—energy and originality—and add one more factor: spontaneity. Ideally, the band should play a different set each night, rather than just memorizing a...
It was unusually cold for Long Beach. Normally, this is the kind of town where anything approaching raindrops is cause for doomsayers everywhere to break out the tinfoil headwear and prepare for the apocalypse, and the air had a certain unknowable charge to it that...
Okay, first things first. The CD: I’m biased. I’ve seen Justice perform their Cross live show twice, I loved their album, and I have thousands of dollars of stock in crunchy basslines. So it should come as no surprise when I tell you that sometimes I kiss...
If it can be assumed that popular music (and specifically rock 'n’ roll) has functioned to date as a sociological model, it stands to reason that the evolutionary progression of it would mirror that of the art form’s human component; those that make the...
Once again The Grand Ballroom fooled me. When I see a start time of 8pm, I don't expect the show to actually start at 7:45pm. But for the second time this month, a show there started early, and for the second time I missed most of an amazing set from the opening...
The notion of making the soundtrack to a film available for purchase has always seemed like a dubious prospect to me. Honestly, without the accompanying flicker show, how is a grab bag of basically unrelated songs supposed to make any sort of lasting impression? The...
After three versions of We Are Pilots, Shiny Toy Guns have finally released their latest in electronic/dance, Season Of Poison. First things first, a new singer. Sisely Treasure has stepped into the shoes of Shiny Toy Guns' familiar frontface, Carah Faye Charnow....
If the measure of a classic album or document is its seemingly complete integration into a cultural vernacular, it can only be said that Cheap Trick’s At Budakan! is one of the biggest, most enduring documents in the recent history of popular song. The name of...