The reason that pop punk has always found a receptive audience is really, really simple: every generation wants to think it is nothing like the previous one. They need to believe that they're writing an all-new book; that no one has ever dealt with what they're dealing with, that no one's ever felt bored or helpless or shiftless, never felt left out, never been stuck and overlooked in the middle, never been brimming with energy and screaming for change but...

If one glances into the “Whatever Happened To?” file locked up in the vaults of Canadian rock, you'll notice there were many great bands in the Nineties but an incredible number of players that jumped ship from those bands at some point. Some of those bands continue to make music today but someone will inevitably ask, “Hey – there was another guy in that band wasn't there? Whatever happened to him?” There are actually more of those than you'd think....

When Jimi Hendrix was at the top of his game between 1967 and 1970, the mark he left upon rock n' roll was indelible and arguably changed the face and form of the genre forever. In just three years, he made three lauded albums (four if one includes the live document Band Of Gypsys) that completely augmented the values inherent to rock and proved to totally obscure generic boundaries; to date, a who's who of guitarists including Dave Navarro, Dean...

Rock history is littered with the stories of bands that worked tirelessly to break through only to enjoy diminished returns at best. It is, by all accounts, wildly frustrating; a band can try endlessly to find just the right combination of factors to strike gold, yet consistently come up short each time. Sometimes though, the best results come when a band just lets go and, if ever proof was requisite that some of the best things happen when you're not...

When one reaches the point where it has been forty years after an artist has passed on, it feels awkward to imply that their story is continuing to deepen, but the body of work that Jimi Hendrix left behind is an extraordinary case. Since Hendrix' passing in 1970, volumes of post-humus compilations have been issued that typically reprise his 'guitar god' glory years but, unless outside assistance was added after the fact (as was the case with pastiche offerings like...

Long before "performance art" was even a twinkle in the eyes of James Franco or Joaquin Phoenix, Andrew W. K. was showing up to interviews with blood and vomit on stained t-shirts. Was it all schtick? Did he take the "Party Hard" lyrics seriously? People often joked that W.K. stood for "Who Knows?" 

His first release of party pop anthems was unleashed in 2001, a confusing turn of the century world where rock critics were lauding the indulgent static-filled noise...

I think the first record was an experiment,” contends Woodhands singer Dan Werb. “We were playing in a genre that we were learning about as we went along; playing shows and writing songs and recording them. Through them, we learned what dance music was all about and we took it as far as we could; in terms of the lyrical content, it was a trip for me to try to write about how I was feeling and see if it...

Historically in every musical movement, purists have always shrieked heresy as soon as someone starts tweaking convention. When that thing which bucks tradition starts fucking shit up, it isn't always done with malicious intent; the band (or bands) in question may have the utmost respect for the basic forms they're working with and the shoulders they're standing on, but it still gets people going. That sort of scenario instantly leaps to mind when one thinks about The Jon Spencer Blues...

Since the stream of original bluesmen that flowed out of the Mississippi Delta began drying up years ago, the ranks of remaining players making the music has been infiltrated by a number of well-meaning and earnest impostors who have kept the spirit of the genre going on life support. Sometimes the music can be good but, more often than not, it just honestly feels like a bunch of weak-ass replicas peddling a dog and pony show of “what the blues...

In the last century, the processes of making and capturing music for the purposes sharing the moment with others has been torn apart and rebuilt so often that, were someone from the dawn of record making transported to the present day, they wouldn't even know where to start. Even in the 1950s and '60s, the act of setting up a single microphone and capturing a band literally live off the floor was the norm; it has only been within the...