It sounds like it should be a semantic debate, but The Dollyrots make the difference between pop-punk and punk- pop very, very obvious on their sophomore album.Pop-punk is the soft stuff – the best-known of the lot would probably be Green Day, No Doub t and Sublime – but punk-pop is ro ugh, tumble and poppy of course but also incredibly sarcastic and sardonic & ndash; all traits that The Dollyrots sho wcase masterfully o n Because I’m Awesome.< br...
A friend of mine took me to task last month for wimping out and not listing my favorite album covers. I had my excuses. In the first place, last month's column was long enough to begin with; I had other issues I was more interested in. Secondly, I didn't want to take the time to decide on my personal favorites. I don't have a ready mental list of my favorite album covers, like I do for my favorite albums (and...
Few of the bands to survive the collapse of alt-rock have held as much enduring appeal as Rage Against The Machine. For the seven years they were at the top of the pile of bands getting talked about, dissected and carried around on the shoulders of politically-aware hard rock and hip-hop aficionados, RATM did more than just win the hearts and ears of a lot of people, they created a mythos that was bigger than the music they made. That’s...
Over the last couple of years, somehow ‘indie rock’ (which, for those keeping score, started out as a colloquial contraction for ‘independent rock’) became less a term for how and on what scale music was distributed and more a point of definition for a particular sound. Once, ’indie rock’ was music made on a tiny budget with tiny or modest ambitionsin mind but, now, it is more a term that defines ’tiny music’. Whether ’tiny’ refers to the scope, overall...
Over the last couple of years, somehow ‘indie rock’ (which, for those keeping score, started out as a colloquial contraction for ‘independent rock’) became less a term for how and on what scale music was distributed and more a point of definition for a particular sound. Once, ’indie rock’ was music made on a tiny budget with tiny or modest ambitionsin mind but, now, it is more a term that defines ’tiny music’. Whether ’tiny’ refers to the scope, overall...
Gavin Rossdale was wise to let six years lapse between the implosion of alt-frauds Bush and embarking on a solo career. He learned the hard way just how bad a taste he’d left in the public’s mouth when his short-lived follow-up band, Institute, failed to make any headway at all in spite of getting plenty of exposure opening for U2 on their Vertigo Tour in 2004; people were simply not ready or willing to subject themselves to Rossdale’s form of...
Oh, the woes of being a music journalist. (Disclaimer: I use the term “music journalist” loosely… This site obviously offers an amazing forum for fans and people with an ability to write to provide commentary on their favorite shows, bands and albums, but despite my state college degree in journalism and the fact that I once staged a brief sit-in in the lobby of Rolling Stone’s New York office because nobody would take my resume, I’m no Ben Fong-Torres. I...
At exactly 8pm, the Fillmore dims its house lights. Apparently, the pioneers of punk like to start things on time. Target Video begins its tribute film, an appropriate way to kick off the evening. Grainy, vintage, black and white concert footage of The Nuns, Noh Mercy, Iggy Pop and Dead Kennedys flashes across the screen. Crude and intense, the video is like moshing down memory lane for the older audience members. For the youngsters (i.e., anyone born during/after the 1980s),...
For a musician that has, in times and confines passed, been known to take as many as five years to follow up a record, that Trent Reznor has released four albums of material (three of all-new songs and one remix disc) in only fifteen months doesn`t just say that the singer thinks he has something to prove, it screams it. Now freed from the confines of a major label, Reznor has elected to use his newest effort as the thing...