The Gourds have been confounding audiences with their catholic musical taste and solid musicianship for almost 10 years. They play credibly in any style you’d care to mention — folk, blues, swamp rock, country — and delight in showing off their range. The title tune is a take on the…
Can we give out a Nobel prize this year for the Most Evolved View of Gender Relations in a Hip-Hop Song Still Saddled With Gratuitous Use of the Word “Bitch”? (We can do it the same night we award the Prehistoric Fuckface trophy to Dr. Calvin “Snoop Dogg” Broadus, whose…
When a band’s cast-off B-sides are good enough to indict an entire subgenre as inane, either the band doesn’t know its own strengths, or a generation of indie-poppers had better put away the four-track and finally apply to graduate school. Outrageous Cherry’s “My Suspicious Midwest” stands somewhere near Hüsker Dü’s…
The wordless one-note howl that opens up Thai Beat A Go-Go swells up long and low from the belly of a jilted man. That single, baleful syllable makes one thing clear: Language may be regional, but heartache is universal. So, of course, is rock ‘n’ roll; it seeped into Thailand…
If you’ve been waiting for someone to have that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup accident that ends with, “Hey, you got electronica in my rock and rap,” look no further than Cross Platform, five great tastes that might taste great together. Dubbed “an experiment in rap, funk, rock, soul & electronic,”…
If Tiger Beat ever dedicated an issue to the hottie bad boys of psychobilly, sure as shit you’d see the mugs of San Diego’s Formaldehydes gracing the cover, asking the preadolescent readership, “Can You Tame Their Wild Souls?” And untamed they are, as drummer Mr. Hyde and guitarist Gizmo play…
Q: Are we not metal? A: Yeah, sorta. Both bands on this bill are enormous-sounding, but they achieve their audio girth from dissimilar means, neither atypical metal. Most of Isis’ albums are three-fourths instrumental and all-fourths conceptual. The band’s previous CDs were sold in room-thrashing flavors like Oceanic and Celestial…
Costumed shtick in the rock ‘n’ roll world is a tough road to travel — just ask the guys from Dread Zeppelin and the Village People, if you can figure out which Holiday Inn Express lounge they’re playing this weekend. Even KISS spent more than half its career sans makeup…
1. Lil’ Jon & Eastside Boyz, Crunk Juice (TVT) 2. Ludacris, Red Light District (Def Jam) 3. Snoop Dogg, R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta): The Masterpiece (Geffen) 4. U2, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (Interscope) 5. T.I. , Urban Legend (Atlantic) 6. Mario, Turning Point (J-Records) 7. Gwen Stefani, Love,…
This Saturday, December 18, the long-running but recently in absentia Rhythm & Form night at the Emerald Lounge returns for “Rhythm & Form — The Resurrection.” Resident DJs Jacob Delph, Brian Pfirrman, and David Siefert are bringing back their tech house stylings in conjunction with wall displays by local artists…
Before landing a record deal in 1978, the Police dyed their collective locks blond and posed as a punk band for a bubblegum advert. That wasn’t the only time a pop trio got its break via a TV commercial. The Dollyrots actually are a punk bubblegum group — one that…
When talking to people from the other side of the country, there are usually three local bands you can name that they’ve heard of: the Gin Blossoms, Jimmy Eat World, and the Phunk Junkeez. And while the Junkeez have yet to tap the mainstream success that GB and JEW experienced,…
There may be a lot of bitchy backbiting in the music business at large, but on a local level, great P-town bands understand the spirit of the season. Local rockers Goodbye Tomorrow are the epitome of “good sports” — when the musicians parted ways with bassist David Roat, they posted…
David Allan Coe’s been looking like a redneck version of George Clinton lately, sporting a multicolored dreadlock beard, big sunglasses, and more tattoos than Skin and Ink. But the only thing funky going on behind the Confederate flag guitar is the booze-and-broads smell of a hard-livin’ country legend. The 65-year-old…
When local blues outfit Sistah Blue took second place at the International Blues Talent Competition in 1996, the band was just a year old. Over the past nine years, it’s built up a fan base by playing all over the Valley, opening for such acts as John Lee Hooker and…
While all the upstart pop-punk bands seem insistent on establishing their “maturity,” the Vandals are like the guy who shows up to the 20-year high school reunion wearing parachute pants and a joy buzzer, revealing he still lives in his mom’s basement and still works at the local comic book…
1. Iron and Wine, Passing Afternoon (Sub Pop) 2. Arcade Fire, Funeral (Merge) 3. Pinback, Summer in Abaddon (Touch & Go) 4. My Morning Jacket, Early Recordings, Chapters 1 & 2 (Darla) 5. Elliott Smith, From a Basement on the Hill (Anti) 6. Neko Case, The Tigers Have Spoken (Anti)…
Guy Blakeslee, a.k.a. Entrance, plays left-handed on conventional guitars turned upside down, just like Jimi Hendrix. Blakeslee has also developed his own unique style, a blend of blues, rags, field hollers, ragtime and primordial Midwestern American church music that at times comes close to the sound John Fahey called “American…
‘Twas 16 nights before Christmas, and all through Glendale Arena, little punk rockers were throwing bottles of Aquafina. Stage divers were hung from the rafters by their hair, in hopes that someone would get them the fuck down from there. The stage was warmed up by Story of the Year,…
This English band, named after a Talking Heads song, originally formed in the late ’80s after all the members met in art school. After recording a debut EP, the group released its first full-length album, Pablo Honey, in 1993, which spawned the international smash single “Creep.” Although some thought it…
A friend of mine refers to all electronic music as “techno.” Doesn’t matter if it’s drum ‘n’ bass, jungle, house, down-tempo — to him, “it’s all fucking techno, man.” And with a little encouragement, he’ll launch into a rant that includes dead-on onomatopoeia of what techno sounds like: Sst. Umph…
For all the cynical talk of grave robbing and misplaced mythology, this much-ballyhooed, litigation-delayed three-CD/one-DVD Nirvana boxed set delivers an intriguing, entertaining, and periodically spine-tingling depiction of the trio’s seven-year journey — warts and all — with none of the voyeuristic guilt associated with reading 2002’s disgraceful journals. Opening with…
