The babies were wearing scuba gear, and levitating above all the houses in the neighborhood. And when Christopher Pomerenke woke up, he wrote a song about the surreal scene from his subconscious, called “Throw Your Babies.” The tune serves as the leadoff track for I Know What It’s Like to…
To the best of drummer Victor DeLorenzo’s recollection, when the Violent Femmes unleashed their own peculiar strain of punk-inspired folk on the Milwaukee club scene of the early ’80s, people generally thought they were “demented.” “They didn’t understand how anyone would think that other people would want to see some…
If any good can be said to have come of what Elvis Costello refers to here as “a fearsome chain of events started out by a mean-tempered woman called Katrina and ably assisted by some nincompoops and incompetents,” you could start with Costello’s rekindled relationship with American R&B royalty Allen…
Watching the members of Cream retrace their steps, from Eric Clapton talking Ginger Baker into letting Jack Bruce join the band in 1966 to their acclaimed reunion in 2005, you have to wonder how they made it through a conversation, let alone two years of constant tours and classic albums…
Imitation is most definitely the sincerest form of flattery. For a perfect example, look no further than local ska group The 2 Tone Lizard Kings. The eight-member outfit, which has been a regular at joints like Alice Cooper’stown, covers a slew of ska classics in its raucous repertoire, including throwbacks…
When Sgt. Pepper first came out, one reviewer called it “George Martin’s finest hour.” He’s had several cracks at cheapening that high-water mark, from producing the disastrous Sgt. Pepper movie soundtrack to the George Martin: In My Life album on which he gave everyone from Sean Connery to Goldie Hawn…
Long before morphing into a three-headed disco machine, the Brothers Gibb recorded some of the weirdest head albums ever made. Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices ranked Bee Gees 1st among his all-time favorite albums. Imagine how many acid trips went awry with morbid advice like “Don’t go talking too…
It’s hard to say why anyone would think to cover Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats, a cover-heavy oddity whose appeal is based more on the spirit of friendship and drunken abandon producer John Lennon was able to capture on his way to passing out than on what he and his drinking…
The cover shot shows Nas about to drop a black rose into hip-hop’s open grave. But this is more a wake-up call than a eulogy, as though he’s saying hip-hop may be going down, but it’s not going down without a fight from Nas, who pronounces it dead here with…
Gwen Stefani is still pushing the limits of ridiculousness on The Sweet Escape; after all, it takes a person quite secure in her self-confidence to bring back yodeling as a viable chorus hook. But the aforementioned von Trapp-fest (“Wind It Up”) is actually the worst song on her second solo…
By the time My Morning Jacket dropped the reverb-laden Southern art-rock classic Z in late 2005, they’d reached the point where Rolling Stone could safely proclaim them America’s answer to Radiohead. But for many longtime fans, the quintessential MMJ experience will always be the live show, which explains their latest…
Tom VandenAvond embodies everything that makes alt-country awesome. He’s got a surly, drank-too-much-last-night-and-now-I-gotta-perform attitude, a killer take-no-shit slogan (“You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas”), and even an authentic trucker cap (no Hot Topic poseury here). One can hear wisps of such late greats as…
Y’all might be going to some fancy-ass party or hipster hootenanny on Sunday, December 31, but as for us, we’re going to Hell. More specifically, Club Hell’s nocturnal New Year’s Eve affair known as Hell’s Bells. The freaky fetishists, disturbing divas, and other assorted creatures of the night scene who…
Soundtrack CD release
DJ’s and Dancing
After a few weeks of hanging with crowds of casual kids, Club Candids needed to spice it up with something slightly more sophisticated, like Club io’s Million Dollar Mingle on Saturday, December 23. The patrons were polished, stylish and mackin’ like mad. This VIP night may be a weekly gig,…
I didn’t grow up with Xmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, or any other winter-time holidays – I was raised in a cult, which should surprise very few people that read my shit – but as I’ve acclimated to the real world with all its mistletoe and trees and menorahs, I’ve developed a…
This from Vil Vodka of Vodka Tonic Media and Hollywood Alley: Yesterday around 4pm we lossed one of the most important people of the Hollywood Alley staff: Lucy Wincek…or as many of you know her as “Ross’ mom”. Tom Reardon said it best Sunday night that many of us would…
It’s not a record deal or a spot at the Warped Tour (ugh), but Jumping Bomb Girls, a power-pop trio that Perihelion Arts impresario Miss Amy Young drums in has gotten props from the lefty website Salon.com. The Jumping Bomb Girls (whose name was inspired by old school WWF tag…
“I’m one of the top five hated people in the music industry,” says Nancy Stevens, the manager of local bands Violet Wild and Authority Zero and former program director of alt-rock radio station KEDJ. That statement might sound hyperbolic, but it’s pretty accurate. While running The Edge, Stevens pissed off…
“My meals are ravioli out of the can, and ramen. I came in here tonight with eight dollars in my pocket. I am so white trash.” Keith Mallette’s telling me all this to drive home that he’s not making any money with Hillgrass Bluebilly Entertainment, a local roots music promotion…
When we coughed up the seven bucks to get in the door at PHiX for the “Gothabilly Nitemare Before X-Mas!” show on Saturday, December 16, Grand Avenue was pretty damn quiet. Refusing to be discouraged, we entered the former motorcycle garage turned art and music venue to find an anorexic…
