There's no way to look at Hole or Courtney Love in the present tense without looking at the history, if only because it is now so indelibly etched into pop culture. Of course, there has been the ongoing conjecture and quibbling over the state of Nirvana (or lack thereof), and all of the in-fighting around Kurt Cobain's legacy but, even after that should have faded, Love has remained a full-time pariah as Hole's productivity has become more sporadic. The rumor...
Whether it's an interest in music, visual art, writing, philosophy, science, mathematics or any other endeavor that may require a young mind to think outside the proverbial box, there will come a point when, after being frustrated by failure after failure, he or she begins to wonder if all the good ideas have indeed already been thought up. The moment when that train of thought rolls in represents a crossroads; either the young mind will take that question as a...
Fucked Up is one of those bands that boggle the mind. I'll never know why they're so under-appreciated, because they’re taking hardcore music to the next level and almost entirely redefining what punk rock sounds like. I’ll also never know why they're being marketed to the indie community, because even though they’ve been able to gain critical acclaim, the scene clearly doesn’t know what to do with them. Alas, I could go on and on with this topic (and I...
Some records just sound like they're going to be huge from the first few measures of the first song on them. Whether it's because there's obviously a breathtaking amount of ambition thrown into the (the Eels' Blinking Lights and Other Revelations is like that, as is Trail Of Dead's Worlds Apart), just the right amount of bracing or authoritative sound or even something as simple as a great big riff or vocal rave-up (as was the case with Hendrix' Are...
Ooohhh, are you guys lucky or what? So this time, I took a couple of days and just fleeced everything that wasn't nailed down around the inter-webs. And I thought to myself, “Self,” I thought, “Here I am sittin' on a mudda-fuckin' mountain of free SWAG from the five points and it's an awful lot. Should I sit on some and parcel it out to my devoted readers every so often and make myself look like a golden boy, just...
Some bands are simply unable to escape the comparisons they draw once they've been saddled with them at the beginning of their career, no matter how hard they try. In the name of growth, bands have been known to try some wild and odd stuff in an effort to escape the hole in which listeners have pegged them (Nirvana tried to scare off some fans, Dylan changes hats regularly, John Lydon calls his efforts under the influence of different muses...
Ooohhh, are you guys lucky or what? So this time, I took a couple of days and just fleeced everything that wasn't nailed down around the inter-webs. And I thought to myself, “Self,” I thought, “Here I am sittin' on a mudda-fuckin' mountain of free SWAG from the five points and it's an awful lot. Should I sit on some and parcel it out to my devoted readers every so often and make myself look like a golden boy, just...
Anyone that remembers when Jared Leto first broke onto the mainstream music radar in 2002 with 30 Seconds To Mars likely remembers the initial mixed reception the band received. Presumably, the public's undecided impression was the result of a couple of things; first, the public wasn't (and still isn't, really) accustomed to actors making a valid attempt at career jumping from one art form to another and, second, they were unused to hearing anything other than mawkish, novel tones dribble...
Think the music business can't be a vicious, cut-throat field? The Subhumans can tell you otherwise and the existence of Same Thoughts Different Day is the proof. From the liner notes/explanation sheet tucked in with the disc: “For many years now, Subhumans fans from many countries have been asking us to re-release our album Incorrect Thoughts. We wanted to re-release it some time ago, but there was a problem. Originally, we recorded the album with a Vancouver record label called...
While he's released all manner of compilations, collaborations, one-offs and spoken word albums over the last decade or so, it honestly seems like it has been ages since Jello Biafra released an album of new music. The singer's efforts with Lard and The Melvins don't exactly count; either because generally weak or obviously not creatively focused affairs, albums like Pure Chewing Satisfaction and Never Breathe What You Can't See were okay but left nothing close to the impression that The...