Buy a ticket to the Projekt Revolution concert and your purchase could help eliminate an estimated 167 tons of carbon emissions this year. That should make you feel pretty good about yourself. In fact, give yourself a pat on the back for hitting up a tour that donates $1 of…
While it’s become standard practice for bands to slog through the same old set list night after night, Portugal. The Man has come up with a novel approach to providing audiences with a unique experience each and every time it takes the stage. Nowadays, coming up with a new song…
Perhaps more significant to today’s audiences than Sgt. Pepper’s 40th anniversary was the Beatles’ contribution that same summer to the program Our World. As part of the very first live global television link, the show was broadcast to 26 countries and watched by 350 million people via satellite on June…
Ryan Adams was needled throughout 2005 for releasing three CDs’ worth of songs without seeming to consider whether the tunes met his standards. In interviews, Adams shrugged off such criticism, but lo and behold, he waited more than 18 months — an eternity for him — to release Easy Tiger,…
This Tempe-based indie band’s new release shows that it has two positive points: plenty of enthusiasm and a refreshing willingness to be open and goofy between tracks, à la The Beatles in Let It Be. During one moment, you can hear studio chatter about what one member of the band…
What the Clink? My Machine is Crushed’s debut full-length venture into the world of heavy metal, with producer credit going to none other than Mike Clink of Guns N’ Roses and Metallica fame. And that’s where the impressive points end. While claiming prog rock, the album is a consistent flow…
In the mid-’50s, while Sinatra swung and Elvis and Chuck Berry showed the world how to rock, black Louisianans of Cajun extraction — Clifton Chenier, for one — were plugging in and pumping crackling rhythm and blues into traditional Cajun dance music. The result was tagged “zydeco,” an ebullient and…
And the geeks shall inherit the Earth, indeed. If anyone said that Rush would last 30-plus years in 1975, when robo-tronic drummer Neil Peart joined the Canadian trio (thus transforming it from a derivative bar band into one of the world’s most revered prog icons), they were probably high. But,…
Ever since 50 Cent’s G-Unit mixtape crew earned mainstream recognition with 2003’s platinum-selling Beg for Mercy, members of the group have worked hard to escape Fiddy’s hulking shadow and establish themselves as independent artists. While Lloyd Banks and Tony Yayo have certainly capitalized on G-Unit’s success, neither has managed to…
This bill features a pair of bands noteworthy for their rousing style and lively stage presence. Hailing from Chicago’s Irish South Side, The Tossers began in ’93, before Celtic-punk peers Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys. Though long overshadowed by the aforementioned acts, it wasn’t for lack of talent. While more…
Marnie Stern made one of the most intriguing debuts this year with In Advance of the Broken Arm, a cacophonous yet strangely tuneful blast of prog experimentation that verges on indie rock. Stern’s high-pitched, girlish vocals are slathered in guitar pyrotechnics ranging from crazy metal hammer-ons to Sonic Youth-ish squall…
Generally speaking, styles come and go, but idioms last forever. And when four tuff dudes with the right moxie get their greasy mitts around the correct noise-making implements, settle their deadly attentions upon said idiom (you know, ’60s garage rock), and control their own greasy facial spasms long enough to…
Celeb sensations David Beckham and Posh Spice aren’t the only doses of coolness that England’s been hurling across the pond lately. Witness the growth of dubstep, the darkly rhythmic and beyond-bassy EDM (electronic dance music) descendent of UK garage and grime birthed in London’s underground. Championed by such Brit DJs…
It’ll take three days after I walk through the back door to The Great Escape for my own back door to finally get back to normal (from the ravages of drinking — thus the “great escape”). At any rate, I’m pleased as a pig in shit to review this little…
Remember the good, old days (way back in April), when you could sit at the bar with your beer and suck on cancer sticks without freaking the fuck out about getting fined $50? Well, those days aren’t exactly here again, but there are some places in the Valley where you…
Below are four of my favorite “smoking songs” — tunes from throughout the decades that capture the experience of filling one’s lungs with vice. For a more comprehensive list, Google the words “High Times pot songs.” 1. Fraternity of Man, “Don’t Bogart Me” (1968): This song, which begs the listener…
Picture this: You’re walking down a street, circa 1983, and soaking in all sorts of music from the cool cats carrying boom boxes on their shoulders. Or imagine you’re making a cameo appearance in that killer scene in Amèlie, when the lo-fi sounds from the old dude’s portable record player…
Fergie, probably the most lusted-after hip-hop artist in the world, released her solo debut, The Dutchess, last year. It features 13 tracks of brainless dribble, including “London Bridge” and the barely literate “Fergalicious,” which, upon topping the charts, proved once and for all that hip-hop often specifically targets the dumbest…
Every week, a band breaks up, ending more often with a whimper than a bang. That’s a fate South Mountain Lights sought to avoid with The Last Word, the release of which they’ll celebrate with their final show. “We’ve both been in bands where the band falls apart and you…
Rock music history is paved with the asphalt of failure and obscurity — in their respective eras, the now-venerated watersheds the Stooges, Nick Drake, Velvet Underground, and Tim Buckley moved units in the teensy-weensiest figures. But as someone in the blues field observed, “Give me the flowers while I’m living.”…
OZZFEST IS FREE THIS SUMMER! As the words tolled out over the alkali flats, the rejoicing hordes of twitching, gibbering headbangers nearly swept away the bricks and mortar of our fair nation. Thousands of angry white men went into spasms on guitar showroom floors as police reported an unprecedented outbreak…
In movies, metal bands and their fans are often portrayed as anti-eggheads — note the knee-high nihilists and simpletons of Airheads, This Is Spinal Tap, and The River’s Edge. Well, dig this, Movie Producers of Hollyweird: Those who play metal have also attended music school. That’s right; the core members…
