Hey – remember when the Red Hot Chili Peppers were the most fun in rock? Between fifteen and twenty-five years ago, RHCP was absolutely outrageous – they'd slap socks on their cocks while gibbering “Those fuckers are red hot” and dance like Iggy Pop while standing in line at a coffee shop and plan uplifting mofo parties while on camera with Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas and Dana Carvey just for kicks. It was great but, as...

While there's little doubt that tween-age kids will probably flock to the pop-aggressive sounds that I Set My Friends On Fire have concocted on Astral Rejection, it's also hard to not feel like every single, solitary micro-tone of the album flies in the face of every tenet that punk rock has held dear for decades. Remember how punk of every stripe used to work? It was simple: Write some songs (the length of which was irrelevant). Get them on tape,...

Now fifteen years after the band first formed and seven albums after they released Goddamnit and showed listeners that (unlike so many other forms of pop music) punk rock could be dark without being dirge-y, Alkaline Trio has already made an indelible mark on punk, but nothing lasts forever. That isn't meant to sound like critical commentary, it's just common sense; because their music is an inherently youthful form, punk musicians can only stick to one artistic base for so...

It's unfortunate how rockabilly music has become increasingly reliant upon outside sounds and cliches to keep it looking even passably vital as time and trends have passed. Like some kind of parasite, rockabilly will attach itself to another kind of music (rock, punk, hardcore and the soundtracks to horror movies have all been previous victims) and sycophantically leach its essence until there's nothing usable left to take, and then move on to another victim. Nothing really changes and rockabilly hasn't...

Here's a quick side of editorial before we get to the heart of this thing. The recent trend among touring bands with a sizable catalogue and history has been to host concerts where they'll play a classic album from front to back and top to bottom – essentially playing human jukebox for fans. Some fans seem to enjoy it, but there are critics (including me) who just don't understand; part of the attraction for a live show (for me, and...

Hey Junkie, Don' tell nobody, but I got somethin' extra special fo' ya dis week. Ya know how a usually nickel an' dime it aroun', swipin' one song from those who ain't lookin'? I'm proud of myself this week because this week I been really bold – ther's still single songs-is week, but I nabbed more full albums than singles an' I put 'em all innere. I ain't gonna talk too much so as not ta draw too much attention...

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Just one day after the Red Hot Chili Peppers voluntarily leaked their new album, I'm With You, via a full album listening party on their web site, Tom Waits decided that it might not be such a bad idea to do it too. To that end, a news release went out this morning stating that Waits and wife Kathleen Brennan were planning to hold a "Private Listening Party" to unveil Bad As Me – Waits' first full-length album of all-new...

When William Elliott Whitmore released Animals In The Dark (the singer's ANTI– debut) two years ago, he made a remarkable impression. Songs like “Johnny Law,” “Mutiny” and “Hard Times” all drew a parallel between the hardship and will to overcome it which fueled the field music in the air in the American south during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the sense of frustration inherent to punk rock beautifully. He essentially created a new and compelling hybrid of...

It's always interesting to see what comes when a member of a really popular band splinters off to do a solo project because, almost invariably, the results are not what anyone expects. There's always conjecture about what sounds combined to make that original big group, of course, but the bets for what actually fuels an artist's engine when left to his/her own devices are almost always off; for example, Mick Jagger's focus tends to be more on R&B when he's...