On Friday night when the stage lights went up in San Francisco’s Grand Ballroom, a sold-out house whooped and cheered for a rag tag bunch of faux axe swingers in outlandish getups. The performers had come from across the country (some as far as New York and...
Holy hell it’s been a long time since I posted one of these. I can’t exactly tell you why, but at least I have been collecting mp3s during my absence. And I’ve actually found some pretty nice gems mixed in with the songs that have been clogging the...
As I walked into a packed Fillmore and took one look at the condition of the crowd, I could see that this was indeed was going to be "The Most Extreme Tour of the Year." The kids looked like they had already been through hell and back. They were hot, smelly,...
Holy hell it’s been a long time since I posted one of these. I can’t exactly tell you why, but at least I have been collecting mp3s during my absence. And I’ve actually found some pretty nice gems mixed in with the songs that have been clogging the...
Better late than never, right? I’d explain all that’s happened in the last two weeks that has prevented me from reporting this in a timely fashion, but this isn’t a pity fest. Let’s just say it involved a forgotten notebook, 48+ hours in an...
Forgive the cynicism, but the Celtic punk craze came and went into the good night a couple of years ago. It sounds harsh and the fans remaining will probably threaten to grace my groin with a well-placed soccer place kick for saying it, but with the Dropkick Murphys...
Listening to the radio on any given day this week reveals what fans of the genre have feared was coming for a while: pop punk is dead. Those bands once allied with the genre that are still together have moved on and are now either getting political (like Pennywise and...
There are some things that bands do in the span of their careers that – no matter how you look at it – are simply beyond comprehension. If one looks at it objectively, it happens all the time; outside of the current deluge of major label acts recently...
Have you ever had one of those moments where you have no choice butt to simply stop, stare and marvel at your luck? An example would be driving late on an icy winter night, losing control of your car and doing a 720-degree spin across three lanes of highway only to...
Before a packed house at the most famous venue in San Francisco and in front of a backdrop bearing his band’s grammatically incorrect moniker, Kele Okereke felt the need to say, “We are Bloc Party,” Maybe he didn’t want anyone to be confused?...