Admit it: You’ve always longed for a music video that, in sum, features shots of bananas, pineapples, and other fruit; an explosively gaudy color scheme; several bizarre green-screen backgrounds seen at a rapid-fire pace; a rap interlude; a saxophone solo; lyrics about French bread and oysters; and the phrase “motherfucking…
There are inherent advantages to being a jazz musician. Genre constraints are practically thrown out the window and almost anything is considered acceptable, no matter how free, New Age-y, rock-leaning, contemporary, ballady, or bopping. As long as integrity to the art form remains, experimentation is rewarded. Guitarist Pat Metheny has…
The Ataris have always been Kris Roe’s baby. He is the singer, chief songwriter, and one constant member of the platinum-selling pop-punk band. An Indiana native, Roe has been fortunate enough to see music he wrote and performed go platinum in March 2003. For the 10-year anniversary of that platinum…
Ask George Thorogood how he’s doing, he’ll likely answer, “Bad.” Then, after leaving his interviewer wondering, he’ll follow up with “bad to the bone.” Somehow, it all seems pretty predictable, even expected, from the Delaware Destroyer some 40 years into a career — and 32 years after his biggest hit,…
Bettye LaVette has been making gritty, powerful soul music for more than 50 years. If you haven’t heard of her, that’s not unusual. If you thinkher career began in 2000, that’s not surprising either. LaVette’s had an up-and-down career, releasing almost three dozen singles — a number of them charting…
MewithoutYou is not a band to be taken lightly, nor is it a band easily defined. And right now, it’s a band that’s happy to be back on the road. Characterized by vocalist Aaron Weiss’ stream-of-consciousness lyrics, the Philadelphia four-piece is ever an immersive act — few bands can weave…
For Pete Bernhard, one of the guitarists and the primary singer for The Devil Makes Three, the process of creating the band’s most recent album, I’m a Stranger Here, was surprising. It was the first time the trio did not produce the record themselves (country singer Buddy Miller took the…
For almost a year now, I’ve been writing about music on this blog. Wacky little observations from the viewpoint of a 25-year industry veteran and independent record store owner. Mostly, I ramble poetic (hopefully) about how much I love music. How much it means to me and how it has…
Few bands can straddle the fine line between hard rock and heavy metal — or underground credibility and commercial viability — as well as Stone Sour. The band has released five studio albums, each of which has challenged and exceeded the band’s — and its fans’ — expectations. Stone Sour…
Frank Zappa needs no introduction . . . or does he? Though considered one the 20th century’s greatest composers by critics, much of his music, wasn’t accessible to mainstream audiences. Songs like “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” and “Valley Girl,” a duet with daughter Moon Unit, broke through, but only enough…
When you listen to Mind Over Matter, the new album from Young the Giant, it is impossible not to notice the different energy coursing through the band’s collective vein. With his throaty cries, frontman Sameer Gadhia sounds as if he’s expelling personal demons, and Mind undeniably is more propulsive than…
Ryan Avery has put his stamp — and then some — on the downtown Phoenix scene. Over the past decade, the ultra-hyphenate has been a musician, comedian, singer, performance artist, mustachioed raconteur, conductor, and frontman for such bands as Fathers Day, Drunk and Horny, and Nightwolf. At any given time,…
The music industry is a brutal battlefield. It’s strewn with the bodies of talented artists who were suffocated by success (Kurt Cobain), swallowed whole by indulgence (Keith Moon), or taken by tragedy (Randy Rhoads). No genre is safe: The path to the top of the charts is paved with some…
Those who have come to know The Motet as an Afro-centric band should be happy with the band’s directional shift on its eponymous new album. While the African influences that gave the Boulder, Colorado, group its footing in the 1990s can still be heard, The Motet has morphed into a…
Yuck’s Max Bloom faced down new songwriting challenges on his band’s second album by concentrating on making Glow & Behold a more cohesive, concise whole. The London band’s 2011 self-titled debut drew widespread praise on both sides of the Atlantic for its invigorating take on 1990s alternative rock. For Yuck’s…
The already stacked lineup for the Viva PHX music festival just got a little bigger. It already boasts more than 40 different bands and artists from A to Z (namely, Adam Arcuragi to Zero Zero) and, as of this morning, now includes quirky dance punk/electropop act YACHT and local DJ…
My first taste of Foster the People was hearing KROQ’s Locals Only playing “Pumped Up Kicks” in January 2011. My roommates and I sat in the back of my station wagon, waxing up surfboards and getting ready to paddle at El Porto in Manhattan Beach. I hadn’t seen the music…
My oldest daughter arrived yesterday with my two grandsons, ages 1 and 3. That’s right. I’m a music-blogging grandpa. If you’ve ever read any of my past rambling, you may remember that I’m still wrangling kids as well (five kids total, three in the house). That means I’ve got myself…
On an already long list of distinctions, Skinny Puppy recently added a new line, and not one that makes the pioneering industrial band very proud: the United States government has used the band’s music as a torture device. “We heard through a reliable grapevine that our music was being used…
Though I confess to being an ardent reader of them, I’m resistant to shoveling my year’s listening habits into a year-end list; looking back like that feels like underscoring the records I missed rather than the ones I was spinning endlessly. Beyond that, I find it nothing short of off-putting…
Billy Joel has earned more than a few awards during his lengthy career, including six Grammys, a slew of honorary doctorates, and inclusion in both the Songwriters and Rock and Roll halls of fame. And later this year, the piano-playing superstar can add another prize to his overflowing trophy case:…
Has selfie culture officially gone batshit? Oxford Dictionaries named “selfie” the word of the year in 2013 (it narrowly beat out “twerk” and “binge-watch”) and anyone who goes to concerts sees audience members spending most of the show shooting themselves. Now a marketing firm called 3d Public Relations is asking…
