Remember when punk rock music didn't need a bunch of frills, bells, or whistles strapped to it in order to be considered good? It seems to have been a while since that was the case, and you can start flipping through your record collection to try and figure out when exactly punk started crutching on novelties, gimmicks, cross-genre blending and every other new trick in the book to achieve a short-lived “wow” factor, or you can just throw on The...

Sixteen years ago, The Tea Party ruled Canadian rock radio airwaves and the band's singer, Jeff Martin, was already an icon. Between the group's first two albums (Splendor Solis and The Edges Of Twilight),  The Tea Party shattered alternative rock conventions of simplicity being the first, best way to a hit by incorporating elements of world music (mainly that of East India) and Classic Rock's love of instrumental virtuosity (the band really did sound like the best possible cross between...

I would like to say I didn’t have to leave this show early due to a foot injury that was making it increasingly painful to lean over the barricade for photos. I’d like to say that the venue understood the difference between stating “show starts at 8” and “doors open at 8.” I’d like to say that. I’d be lying, but I’d like to say that. Wounded, sitting on the floor of the Academy of Contemporary Music Performance Lab (previously...

Hey d'ere kiddies,So here we go again wit' another great bag o' SWAG from me ta yous. I tell ya, they ain't gettin' any lighter now! An' 'ey're gettin' better too! I foun' some bits o' the new album by R.E.M. 'at was just layin' around so I picked 'em up an' put 'em in 'ere, an' I also foun' some o' dat new Foo Fighters, Descendents an' Tune-Yards for yer swipin' pleasure, but 'at's the gravy this week. The...

While it has been six years since the band released an album of new material (the re-recorded, remunerated reissue of their debut doesn't count), it's clear in listening to Safeways Here We Come that Chixdiggit has no intention of changing or growing up. In just over sixteen minutes (which comes very close to being able to fit on a seven-inch, incidentally), Fat Wreck's original Canadian signing immortalizes the joys of ramen noodles, the woes and inherent comedy of bad haircuts,...

Listen to enough music, and eventually the lines between novelty, shtick, fallacy and fanaticism begin to get a bit blurry. As record labels worry evermore about their bottom lines and market shares and attempt to compensate by releasing more material than the other guys, the possibility for genuine tripe getting more attention than it deserves becomes increasingly real. How could it not? When every concept of a band is getting unloaded, there's bound to be a couple dogs in the...

Some things never go out of style after they first come in. If one looks at The Dixie Chicks, for example, it's possible to notice that each successive release since  the band's breakthrough Shouldn't a Told You That in 1993 has been rapturously received and even side projects like Courtyard Hounds have done well. Likewise, while the performers' names and faces may change, girlie pop acts have been doing well since the advent of pop music as (in this writer's...

Having just released their seventh studio album,  punk rock legends Social Distortion returned to the Bay Area for the first time in almost two years to play back to back sold out shows at San Francisco's Warfield Theater earlier this month and proved they are still a force to be reckoned with.

 Opening the show with “Road Zombie,” the guitar driven instrumental on the just released Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes, it quickly became apparent that Mike Ness meant business....

It's funny how time has a dehumanizing effect on the stories that people tell. Eventually a given story starts to develop a layer of gloss like shellac as it is told and then re-told by a multitude of sources; the nuance and details get glazed over, characters become idealized commodities and the story becomes a product. In the act of telling a story, characters and events become inflated, are made two-dimensional and robbed of their humanity. Even the story of...

Awright junky, So here we go, dancin' the time warp again. Here's me – yer ever-lovin' Don Loder –  carryin' a great big bag o' SWAG, an' 'ere's you – startin' to feel the itch. Ya gonna try an' take me fer what I got 'ere junky? I betchu won't, but I'll give ya a taste anyway. In'ere, I got a set o' thirty-one pieces o' solid gold SWAG – some of it from some great names like Katy Perry,...