(This is part 2 of our coverage of the 2008 Rockstar Mayhem Festival. Part 2 can be viewed here.) I'm not quite ready to say that the Rockstar Mayhem Festival has taken the place of Ozzfest as the premier summer metal festival, but I will say that Sharon and...
Sometimes a band that you thought you had pegged will turn around and surprise you by totally reinventing its sound between records (also known as when you weren’t looking) and so, when a new album eventually appears, you’re totally caught off-guard by what...
To quote Magnum P.I., “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right…” how does a re-issue of a gimmick get made without getting called a farce? From day one, Me First And The Gimme Gimmes was based on the flimsiest of ideas –...
Entertainers of every stripe and discipline are strange breeds of creature. For whatever reason, as soon as an individual gets into one quadrant or another of the arts and makes it in his or her profession, the grass begins to look greener on the other side of the...
What is going on out on the west coast of Canada? They boast the healthiest population in the country, are the least polluted and have the most consistent weather, yet still so much of the musical population (beginning with Hot Hot Heat) has an obsession with The Cure....
The popular theory is that Brian Wilson was the creative drive behind The Beach Boys and it’s true; Brian is the face of the band and his story is the one that most people regard as the definitive one for the rise and fall of the band that popularized the surf...
What a piece of work is Billy Idol. In the late Seventies, there was no arguing that the punk band he fronted, Generation X, was at the bottom of the British punk pile that managed to make it across the ocean. Idol was the embodiment of what Iggy Pop called the...
Sometimes when a producer begins to get legs under him and gets known as an “it” producer, anyone paying attention knows that the paths of the individual in question and a particular musician will cross. It’s a foregone conclusion; they’re...
In 2006, Bound Stems proved to the world that they are more than capable of writing great songs, which they did quite well on their debut LP Appreciation Night. But the soon-to-be-released follow up, The Family Afloat, exists at a different level entirely. Their debut...
There are few things more logistically difficult to sort out than the way that Broken Social Scene works. There’s no reason for that really, other than the fact that there are so many songwriters in the band—so many heads—that it makes bands like The...