Right around the middle of the 1990s, the underground demigods of the previous decade (Butthole Surfers, Meat Puppets, Mission Of Burma, the list goes on) finally got their due topside because bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam sang their praises; in an attempt to get...
People always say that I’m nuts. Loco. Insane. Incomprehensible. It could be that I’m bi-polar, schizophrenic and manic-depressive in a blender with extra curry, but it could also be captured in a music video by N.E.R.D. that makes no freaking sense at all....
Banished for twelve years because a fluke, throwaway song struck a chord and dragged them into the spotlight for about a month in 1996, Local H got dubbed a one-hit wonder with the success of “Bound For The Floor” and were then summarily forgotten when the...
I had been waiting almost twenty-two years to see Candlemass. After purchasing the Epicus Doomicus Metallicus LP at The Record Vault (a nod to all you old school S.F. metalheads) way back in 1986, I immediately began to worship the band and their heavy-as-fuck Doom...
I was really looking forward to his show. I had seen Arch Enemy a few times in the past, but they were always one of the support bands on the bill, and never seemed to get quite enough time on stage. Their latest offering, Rise Of The Tyrant, has been in my current...
There reaches a point when all the semantics, wordplay and pontificating fall away—when years of frustration are finally relieved. This is one of those moments. To be as blunt as the situation requires, it’s about fucking time The Offspring smashed its head...
Last month I argued that listening to an entire album is a superior experience to just listening to individual songs. Now I'm going to tackle the question of which is the better format on which to listen to an entire album—LP or CD? I realize that, for most...
In celebration of their soon-to-be-released third album, O, Tilly and the Wall are about to head out on a 25-date jaunt around this great country of ours. I really hope it goes well because I just drove from L.A. to Chicago in a friggen Penske truck and we spent about...
Didn’t David Berman’s laconic on-the-lam storytelling match so well with Stephen Malkmus’ blazing guitarwork? Their dubious pairing made American Water one of the premiere on-the-road albums of not just the ‘90s but maybe all-time. After that...
It’s summertime, and that means that there are a gajillion summer tours abound that kids and adults can flock to in hopes that they don’t have to sit through bands they hate while they wait patiently for the one they love. And the people behind me at the...