Sometimes when the 'rock n' roll' context and instrumentation of even the most classic songs is removed or augmented, it becomes readily apparent just how poor or flat-out dumb and laughable the music of the genre can be. For example, when the Flaming Lips covered “Borderline” (a Madonna song) and ended up totally changing the face of it with only a little testosterone, the song just wilted. Conversely, Paul Anka's Rock Swings! album – which collected monster hits from the...
What happens to a one-hit wonder band after their three and a half minutes (the average length of the average pop song) are up? In some cases, when their time is up, it's only as simple as that; after grabbing the world's attention for just enough time to play through their song and drawing rabid fanfare for it, the members of the band in question go back to their day jobs. They might make a half-hearted attempt or two to...
After the abrupt flame-out of Audioslave, it's totally understandable why Tom Morello went the way he did with his career. There were more than a couple of similarities between the end of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave and, after having been bitten, it made perfect sense that the guitarist would shyly elect to do it himself and do it in a form that no one would necessarily see coming. So that's what he did – he came up with...
Murry Hammond kicked off the evening by sauntering out on stage proclaiming, "Welcome to a very special evening with the Old 97's, which is English for I open up for our lead singer," drawing laughs from the crowd. He proceeded to regale the crowd with personal songs and stories about his life including his opening ditty about "a teenage hardcore punk kid who used to ride the rails filming graffiti on box cars." He also sliced into a very heartfelt...
After hanging around the Kevin Says Stage for an hour or so, I decided it was probably time to get over to the Main Stage and see what was happening over on the other side of the Pier. After making my way through the sea of kids and stopping off at the...
Want to see someone pretend they are starring in an iPod commercial in a live setting?* C'mon, you know you do…it's on your list of things to do before Halloween rolls around and you have to pull out the snow boots and ugly sweaters, right? Well, that's a distinct possibility now that Brooklyn's Chairlift have announced a spate of tour dates for August-October. Starting off at All Points West on August first, Chairlift will hit the road for the last...
The excitement is palpable in the New York apartment where Patience Hodgson – lead singer for The Grates – is temporarily residing. Currently in North America to do a short string of appearances at festivals and one-off shows in Canada and the United States (including Hillside Festival in Guelph, Ontario and Monolith Music Festival in Morrison, Colorado), Hodgson recently whispered the announcement that, four months ago, The Grates began writing songs for another album that they hope to begin recording...
You dirty, dirty boys. You started with four, grew to eight, cut down to three, and now go by the name of Scratch Perverts. The three of you, Tony Vegas, Prime Cuts and Plus One, must put in a lot of work when you go through almost forty songs in an hour and twenty minutes. The album, Beatdown, is an obliteration of sound and shredded vinyl captured for us all to hear in the same fashion that Rodney King’s beat-down...
"Your names aren't on the guest list. Sorry." I'm supposed to talk to Thurston Moore, and quite honestly, I felt like I was in over my head even before this particular neutron bomb exploded. The box office attendant at Philadelphia's Electric Factory just gives me a shrug. "Are you sure?” I ask him. “I'm supposed to do an interview with the band." I remembered that I'm supposed to talk to a guy named Dan Mapp who's Sonic Youth's manager, and...
How is it that The Dead Weather has come to be regarded as “Jack White's new project?” Granted, there's no arguing that White is an important element in the band (he gets co-writing credit on seven of Horehound's eleven songs) but he is the drummer in The Dead Weather – a position that seldom if ever affords the sole creative custody of a band. Did anyone refer to Eyes Adrift as “Bud Gough's new band” in 2002? Does anyone other...