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...
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...
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...