The rap on 311 almost precedes the band’s fame and music themselves. Short of getting into all of the neuroses and gallows commentaries I typically find around them, I’ll just suffice in this instance to call them divisive. On one hand, they have a festival dedicated to them, “311 Day,” in New Orleans, which is […]
For having issued one of the most critically acclaimed rock albums by any woman of the ’90s, Liz Phair has kept a pretty low profile for the last 25 years. Really, though, I think she’s always been a touch shy and self-conscious. Don’t let the cover art nudity of Exile in Guyville and racy, raunchy […]
Every time I try to make my music taste semantic, or He** even SPECIFIC, something happens to dash my intention to shreds and I’m left again with a certain inner chaos that seems to echo nature and the violent weather swings endemic to the American Midwest. Like Guided by Voices, Tapes ’n Tapes are product […]
Throwing a cover version on your major label debut studio album is, if not rare, at least a little bit gutsy, undoubtedly. It’s a gesture that says: “Here we are… we’ve arrived and we deserve to be considered amongst the historic in music.” It’s an endeavor that’s, at least in my noxious opinion, pretty hazardous, […]
On May 3, 2021, variety.com reported that the American rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers were selling their catalogue to a company called Hipgnosis for a total of $140 million. This move, in a sense, mimicked the recently prior endeavor of Bob Dylan, who, according to forbes.com, was said to move his artistic merchandise to […]
Wikipedia dubs Live at Leeds “the first live album by English rock band The Who,” hence rendering it amongst the initial wave of live albums, all time. It follows the Grateful Dead’s Live/Dead, in this regard, by one year, and Jefferson Airplane’s Bless its Pointed Little Head by the same span. For whatever reason, the […]
It’s funny to think that “commercial hip-hop” might actually be a style of hip-hop, just like “old school,” “golden era,” “gangsta” or “trap.” If this is the case, it would definitely pertain to the era close to the turn of the century, comprising such walking brand names as Jay-Z, DMX, Outkast, Wyclef Jean, Nelly and […]
There’s this song on The Wallflowers’ commercial breakthrough album Bringing down the Horse called “Bleeders.” Actually, as an unrelated note, I think it would have made a better choice of single than “The Difference.” Anyway, more along my point, in this song, Jakob Dylan seems to, in a way, address the fact of the complication […]
So our entertainment sectors in modern society are divided up into certain realms — music, the visual art, the written word, and comedy, to name a few. Of all of these art forms, I don’t think there’s any question, comedy is the newest. In fact, it’s typically held that the first prominent “stand-up comedian” of […]
I think we all knew this day would come, eventually… actually it should have come somewhere around 2010 but at that point the show was almost just too awful to handle in any regard without a Haz-Mat safety data sheet. And I’ll be the first to admit that I have seen SOME funny skits on […]