In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera explains the daunting feeling of vertigo. He describes it as the bending of two extremes, paradoxes merging together and evoking the sense of collapse in a world of seemingly stable constructions. Of course in the...
For some musicians, like C’mon co-founder Ian Blurton, the bloom never comes off the rose—particularly where playing in front of a live crowd is concerned. Blurton is the portrait of a Canadian rock lifer. Beginning in 1982 with Change Of Heart and then...
Let’s take a minute to discuss Sweden—a musical muse of a country with a population roughly a quarter that of California and where the largest national export is sexy rock ‘n’ roll bands in tight skinny jeans. (I made that last part up....
Let’s take a minute to discuss Sweden—a musical muse of a country with a population roughly a quarter that of California and where the largest national export is sexy rock ‘n’ roll bands in tight skinny jeans. (I made that last part up....
What has gotten into Frank Black? In fact, where is Frank Black? What sort of event occurred in this man’s life to cause him to revert to the Black Francis moniker of bygone days, put down his Fender Telecaster and dramatically pace back and forth across the...
Those of you that have an ear for the grandiose might just be delighted to hear that Commodore Jason Spaceman, helmsman of the good ship Spiritualized, has set course for American shores. In the U.S. for the first time in four years, the band will be coming off a...
My co-workers and I were discussing the Avril Lavigne/Rubinoos controversy (in case you live in a cave, Lavigne's last hit "I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend" quite obviously steals its chorus, hook, and title from the Rubinoos' "I Wanna Be Your...
When the folks over at K7! Records decided to let two non-DJs take a crack at putting out a DJ-Kicks, there might not be two people better suited for this task. Self-admitted, Berlin’s Booka Shade (Arno Kammermeier and Walter Merziger) are not DJs. They are,...
“I’m 100 years old today,” said lead singer, Matt Popieluch, after his band, Foreign Born, did their best to sneak on stage Friday at the crowded Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco. If not for his strange announcement, the band might have been mistaken...
In spite of the fact that Foo Fighters’ new album encompasses four tenets that imply passive forms of solitude, there isn’t much in the way of passivity in Grace’s dozen tracks—although they do express another reaction to loneliness. Dave Grohl...