Hey Junkie! Kay, so I gotta joke fo' ya: What's green, four hundrit yards long an' might make ya cry? Ya wanna know? Dis week's SWAG Report – at's what. Yeah, i's not funny, but the ream o' stuff I came by this week ain't funny either; dis week, I gotta double shot o' what I normally got – not thirty, but SEVENTY bits o' ill-gotten gains – ta… wha's Fi' dollar Billy say? “Submit fer yer approval.” There ain't...

It may have been almost a decade since last the band launched a large-scale tour but, since the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion unveiled its mammoth reissue project last year, they've fallen right back in step with old practices and taken every opportunity to remind the world what they're made of. Most recently, the band embarked on a gale-force, whirlwind tour which has found them touching down on four continents with dates in Argentina, Brazil, Germany, France, Italy and Japan in...

Awrightcha mooks, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know yer all chucklin' a little that dis is da SWAG Report 69 (hehehe… Sixty-nine!), but I ain't screwin' aroun'is week awright? A number's a number, no matta how much fun it is. Inn'ere, I got THIRTY-TWO PIECES o' primo dope fo' ya ta sample, an' some of it izz'a fines' kind. We ain't talkin' no shit 'ere, ann'ere's somethin' fer everybody, so buckle up cuzz'ere we go. This week, jus' fer you, I...

Earlier this morning, a publicity news release went out like a slug from a twelve gauge shotgun: after a decade together, Alexisonfire is disbanding. After some of the events which took place over the last few years, and with many of the band's members embarking on side projects including City and Colour, Black Lungs and Bergenfield Four, some fans and industry critics may be less than surprised at the split, but vocalist George Pettit made it official when he issued...

Everyone is getting a history lesson before we get into this record. The Calm Blue Sea is a four-piece group out of Austin, TX which originally formed back in 2007. They released a six-song album in 2008, followed by the score to Siegfried in 2009. Now, in 2011, the band has gone back to that first six-song album, completely remastered it with two extra tracks and reissued it with better distribution. There's an almost a genuinely calming effect to The...

Probably the most famous bit of philosophy that Andy Warhol ever uttered – ignoring the indelible mark he made on the realms of music and theater and art – was that, “In the future, everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes.” Since the artist first made that proclamation in 1968, the phrase has been used to justify innumerable entertainment industry phenomena and other such passing fads. Since that time, while trends in pop culture have changed both dramatically and...

Those who graduated high school before 1998 (read: before high-speed internet was available virtually everywhere including rural areas and before file sharing sites forced the bottom out of the bootleg album industry) may remember when one of the easiest ways for young fans to really prove their undying fan-dom for a band was to know every song and every lyric in a band's catalogue and be able to recall them by rote. Some kids would even play “Name That Tune”...

Oh you lucky lil' junkies, Y'know, I give you lil' ingrates a lot an' don' ask fer much back, but I think I out-did myself fo'ya dis week junkie. Not too long ago, I did the "unthinkable" an' walked right inta major label central an' started layin' my sticky fingas on stuff. 'At's kinda like wavin' a AK-47 aroun' in Times Square an' expectin' ta walk out in one piece, butcha know what? I pulled it off bitch! Dis week...

Look around the pop diaspora in 2011, and you might be surprised to discover that something's missing: innocence. It sounds impossible to believe, but think about it – when's the last time you heard some sugary pop which didn't have some ulterior motive? The prevailing trend in both pop and indie rock has been to sugarcoat hard feelings recently, and play to some kind of overdone irony; Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera built their careers on such fashionably professional pop,...

Dolly Parton brought her Better Day Tour to the Sleeptrain Pavilion late last week, and reaffirmed what most people in the venue already knew within minutes – that she is still a top notch performer, and a country music legend, without a doubt.

 Opening the show with an even more feel-good version of Katrina and the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine,” Dolly was charming and engaging, and had an over-abundance of energy. She danced and moved around the stage with the...