I'm not really punk enough for punk shows. I mean, I've listened to punk rock in various forms since the '80s, but I just can't get my affinities right. So often do I get caught up in the fast, simple, raging music, the politics that remind me of my own being sung with passion and ferocity, and the camaraderie and companionship for those of us who roll a little off the edge of normal that I neglect to pay attention...

There is something about gigantic, fuzzy riffs—riffs so big that you could land a DC-10 on them and so solid you could build the Freedom Tower on them. They make men dress in denim and tease their hair out. They make heartbreakingly beautiful girls with headbands and sleeve tattoos hang out with overweight, sweaty men who who can't stop dancing into everyone around them. All for the chance to share a moment of perfect riffage. On a recent weekday in...

Since first appearing in 1974, The Residents have followed a lonely and insular path through the underground fraught with creative dead ends and lengthy, spiraling cul-de-sacs. Initially, it was all very interesting and compellingly strange but, as time has worn on (read: for the last twenty-seven years) the band has gone from purveyors of gloriously odd and remarkable music to a group lost in a meandering musical labyrinth of its’ own design. Since 1981, the band has trekked through kid’s...

Of the emcees to spring from NWA around 1990, Ice Cube has been the steadfast upholder of the more theatrical side of that defunct group; releasing a series of albums that never stop issuing grand boasts and grand statements, wearing that imposing stature visibly and obviously on his sleeve and never deviating from a methodical fairly reeks of stately posturing. The trend continues on Raw Footage (check out the “For all you niggas that don’t do gangsta rap, don’t get...

In the strictest sense, Golden Smog wasn’t really a band – not under the conventional definition of the term anyway. Everybody in the group was already in a successful band – Gary Louris and Marc Perlman had Jayhawks, Dan Murphy had Soul Asylum, Kraig Johnson was in Run Westy Run and, of course, Jeff Tweedy was doing either Uncle Tupelo or Wilco depending on the day – so there was no pressure to “make it” because everybody’s bills were already...

Punk rock has been around long enough now (the actual duration and ‘first release’ title varies, but everyone can pretty much agree that the match was struck between thirty and thirty-five years ago) that the genre has had the opportunity to develop a mythos as well as a sort of revisionist history to support the lore. For example, it has been advocated by several of the older lions that the genre got a head of steam under it because the...

After seeing as many shows as I have over the years, it’s still pretty easy to walk away and say that I had a really good time, but it’s another to experience something truly unique as I—along with 3500 Chicagoans—did on this warm Wednesday evening at perhaps the most beautiful venue in the country. During “Festival,” while soaked in a dim yellow light that made Jónsi look like he was standing on a street corner, he turned the volume knob...

Sometimes a band will appear with a record that exhibits sounds considered to be haute mode at that particular moment but comes up lacking by comparison to those bands earning praise. In other words, the band in question is doing exactly the same things and they sound very similar to what`s dominating the airwaves yet, somehow, when passed through this particular group, it incites nothing but cringes. Take, for example, Star Fucking Hipsters; started as the side project for Stza...

I had been told to expect a great live show before I went to see The Hives last night at the Warfield in San Francisco—but no amount of warning could have prepared me for the musical onslaught that I experienced when I got there. There is no doubt that I have never seen a band with as much sheer energy blasting from the stage. It was as if someone had flipped the volume control into overdrive and pushed the fast...

Anyone familiar with The Creepshow’s story has been waiting for a new release with trepidation for the last two years. Upon first appearing, the band set the psychobilly world on fire as singer Jen “Hellcat” Blackwood, bassist Sean “Sickboy” McNab, drummer Matt Gee and keyboardist Reverend McGinty tossed a keg-sized Molotov cocktail into a haunted mausoleum and then started a zombie dance party around the resulting bonfire with the contents of their debut, Sell Your Soul. There was no stopping...