Oil and water. Michael Jackson and children. Punk rock and popularity. They all mix badly, but no combination is worse than the watered-down punk rock that thrives at Hot Topic and TRL. The best punk sticks to the DIY ethos and requires a little digging to find, but that doesn’t…
History is written by the victors or, in the case of pop-music history, by the people who heard the victors. We know the hits, and we know the records that sold terribly at the time but became influential later on. It’s interesting, however, to look between the cracks of history…
The story of one of the great lost rock documentaries begins with a phone call from a member of Triumph, the Canadian power trio most notable for its uncanny resemblance to Spinal Tap. About six years ago, that band’s singer and drummer, Gil Moore, phoned up Eddie Kramer, the producer…
At first glance, the renovated Granada Theater looks mostly unchanged–the same stage orientation and bar areas, the same murals of movie icons up on the wall. Yet, a few beers into the evening, and the differences start to creep in. There’s that huge sign hanging above the rafters, bright as…
This just in: The Polyphonic Spree will perform at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday, along with OutKast, Usher, Jessica Simpson, Jet and Hoobastank. Don’t worry if you miss the show; MTV will replay it somewhere between five and 3,000 times over the next month. On Thursday, there will…
This spunky Hollywood pop-rock outfit boasts not one but two former child actors: singer Jenny Lewis, who made Shelley Long feel like a good mom in Troop Beverly Hills, and guitarist Blake Sennett, who somehow survived a four-year stint in the cast of Boy Meets World. (The band also boasts…
Twenty-five bucks for rare and unreleased tracks from, among others, Tom Waits, Old 97’s, R.E.M., Ben Kweller, Sleater-Kinney, Death Cab for Cutie, Jimmy Eat World, the Flaming Lips and Elliott Smith…what’s that you say? It’s actually $12 in a CD store and on Amazon.com? And it’s free if you go…
The artists collectively known as the Native Tongues are noted as the primary purveyors of “conscious rap” during the ’90s, but New Jersey’s Brand Nubian was also on the frontlines. But Brand Nubian wasn’t as well-received as groups such as De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, largely because…
A tribute collection must be judged not on the reverence for the source material but on the overall quality of the new product. However great the influence the Carter Family had on folk country and even rock, this gathering of the usual suspects (Willie Nelson, George Jones, the late Johnny…
The Snoop Dogg Afterparty was heavy on party, light on Snoop. The Doggfather made only a brief appearance in the audience on Friday night, about halfway through Erykah Badu’s terrific mid-evening set. I lingered around till 3 a.m. with a few hundred other suckers, hoping he’d make a stage cameo,…
I’d pretty much gotten over Phantom Planet’s cute-guy L.A. indie-rock when Fox started showing these teasers for the second season of The O.C. with the band’s “California” as the soundtrack. That made me remember what a good tune “California,” off 2002’s The Guest, is, and that the people who made…
Some people would strongly suggest taking a date to see Kelly Willis in concert. After all, she’s a sweet-voiced Texan whose country tunes stand out from the CMT crowd, and such a date would prove a man’s sensitivity without straining his eardrums. But we’re not so sure that’s a good…
You may know Bob Schneider. And you may know Salim Nourallah. But you probably didn’t know that the two Texas singer-songwriters are childhood friends who played together while growing up in El Paso. Most people would never put the pair in the same sentence: Schneider is the swaggering, perennially-almost-famous frat-boy…
The sadly incoherent old-man bullshit spewed by Nick Hornby in his recent New York Times op-ed tribute to Philadelphia pub-rockers Marah wasn’t only annoying to humans who listen to music for more than a reminder that the 1960s have been over for longer than they happened. It was also in…
The members of the Wrens read off like a PTA roll call. Guitarist Greg Whelan and his bassist brother Kevin work for Pfizer in New Jersey and use their vacation time to tour. Drummer Jerry MacDonnell, a father of three, also holds a corporate job, as did singer/guitarist Charles Bissell…
Greece is the word. And as the Summer Olympics hit Athens for 16 days of glory, it’s the only word you’ll hear. Greece hasn’t hosted an event this big since Yanni played the Acropolis. And it will be big, and it will be beamed via satellite into our homes as…
While Lakewood father David Cunniff struggled to recuperate from a devastating attack that may leave him paralyzed, skinhead Jesse Chaddock holed up in a Long Beach apartment complex and hid from police. Last Thursday’s Dallas Morning News featured a blink-and-miss-it item on Chaddock’s arrest in California, including the information that…
This just in: Pleasant Grove drummer Jeff Ryan has left the band. Vocalist/guitarist Marcus Striplin cites “personal reasons” and says the band “is sad, but happy for him.” The band will be trying out new drummers and hopes to have someone in place in time for their September 3 show…
As a member of the Mekons, Sally Timms’ sexy, almost secretive vocals have added loads of likability to the brooding, political, country-punk carnage of that band. The occasional solo disc has presented a keen interpreter of songwriters as diverse as John Cale and Johnny Cash. Quite often she has proven…
Things you always knew needed to happen on the last Guided By Voices album: It has to be on Matador Records, the home of Alien Lanes and Under the Bushes Under the Stars. (It is. The band returned to Matador in 2002 after a brief fling with TVT Records. Though…
Idol Records’ latest split EP joins two of Dallas’ polar opposites to cover each other’s songs. The results? Well, for some reason, the pAper chAse hid its guitars while recording Will Johnson’s “The Riot Jack,” leaving the usually beastly band with only piano, synthesized strings and a processed drum loop…
The best song on The Chemistry Set’s full-length debut is a lacerating little number called “Lee Minor 7.” It’s a creepy, somewhat inscrutable story about dropping bombs and shooting guns, full of snare and syncopated piano and vocalist/guitarist Stephen Duncan’s telephone-muffled voice reaching through all that to announce: “This is…
