This is part two of a three-part series on the 2008 Vans Warped Tour. Part one can be found here and part three is coming soon. Well so far it was shaping up to be a pretty good day. It was only 1:30 in the afternoon and I had already seen three pretty awesome bands,...
This is part one of a three-part series on the 2008 Vans Warped Tour. Part two can be found here and part three is coming soon. The punk rock purist in me really wanted to hate the Vans Warped Tour. Back in my youth, an all-day punk rock fest in San Francisco meant a...
Has it really been four years since The Faint released Wet From Birth? That sounds crazy, but when I really ponder that fact, it seems about right. What the hell took them so long? Have they been in the Peace Corps, spreading their electro-vibe to third-world countries...
This year’s Taste of Chicago, which kicked off last week with performances from soul greats Stevie Wonder and Chaka Kahn, has opened its doors for the next generation of soul and R&B performers. And the fact that Chicago is in the running for the 2016 summer...
Aimee Mann's @#%&!Smilers is arguably thoughtful, melodic songwriting, but also a puzzling mix of bland metaphors and stoned, lethargic production. At 14 songs, @#%&!Smilers but would have been better off without the tracks not mentioned here but is a...
Crushable ingénue Lykke Li makes prommy, kissy slow jams and hip-hoppity feel-good dance tracks while revealing a few too many pages of her journal. While she thinks the music scene in her resident city of Stockholm could use "more people, and more heat,...
In an effort to boost awareness for the August 19 release of the long-awaited album, Fourth, The Verve thought it would be a good idea to give fans a free mp3 that isn’t actually off the album. It’s called “Mover,” and apparently it was recorded...
Over the last fifteen years, Chicago’s The Sea and Cake have cemented themselves as one of the most innovative, talented and ambitious groups ever to grace our eardrums. With their unique style of pop and arrangement, stemming all the way back to Nassau and The...
Leave it to a writer to know exactly how to get the attention of other writers. As a whole, the members of the press corps tend to be a fairly predictable lot; there typically tends not to be a single one that won’t get a twisted little smirk at a dick or fart...
This is the album which made me a committed David Bowie fan. I bought my first copy, a bootleg, in a little record store in Mexico City in the summer of 1974. I was exploring the city, and stumbled into this record store with a box of bootlegs on the counter. As...