Photo Credit: Danny Clinch “I’m still alive,” a 26-year-old Eddie Vedder sang on Pearl Jam’s debut album Ten back in 1991. In 2022 – as Vedder turns 58-years-old – that’s still a reality, unlike many of his alternative rock contemporaries who broke through in the lyrically ominous wave of grunge. Vedder has always seemed like one of… Read more
Photo Credit: Paige Sara Back in 1999, as we were just on the brink of the new millennium, Jack White seemingly came out of nowhere (actually Detroit) to save rock ‘n’ roll. Or at the very least, strip it down to its basics, as in his band the White Stripes he used only an electric… Read more
Photo Credit: COIN via Facebook While the pandemic was a time of pause and reflection for most musicians, it marked the most productive moment for Tennessee-based COIN, which has released a steady stream of music across the last two years. Now, on their third album, the band who broke out in 2016 with the song… Read more
Photo Credit: Red Hot Chili Peppers via Twitter It’s hard to believe that the Red Hot Chili Peppers have now been around – just on record – for thirty-seven years. Not only that, but 2021 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the album which made the band superstars, Blood Sugar Sex Magick. Their new studio release Unlimited Love outwardly reflects… Read more
Photo Credit: Getty Images for The Recording Academy (All Photos) Award show attendance has been reliably falling year-on-year and this year, the Recording Academy seemed less concerned than ever about doing anything to revert that trend, with an overlong, self-indulgent ceremony that ran for a seemingly never-ending 2 hours and 33 minutes. Beyond making a… Read more
Photo Credit: Richard Dobson/Newspix After nearly three decades, the Foo Fighters, sometimes called “the Last Great Band,” experienced their first-ever casualty on March 25th when longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins was found dead at age fifty in Bogota, Colombia, where the band had been scheduled to play the Estero Picnic Music Festival as part of a… Read more
Mark Josephson, Executive Director of the New Music Seminar said back in 1988 that “alternative music has real strength, real quality, real excitement, and it has to be socially significant, as opposed to Whitney Houston, which is pablum.” That’s a great explanation of what started during the late-‘70s to early-‘80s as college radio features like Dead Kennedys… Read more
Photo Credit: DTA Records While Avril Lavigne’s new single unmistakably sounds like one of hers in nearly every way – the angsty-but-somehow cute vocals, punk-with-a-pop-hook melody, and even the title (“Bite Me”), it also contains one of the most confounding and funny lyrics in a rock radio hit in quite some time. “Hey you, you should… Read more
Photo Credit: Lupe Bustos “I’m living in your letters // Breathe deeply from this envelope // It smells like you and I can’t be without that scent.” Its lyrics like these that made Dashboard Confessional’s 2000 debut The Swiss Army Romance such a seminal, incisive record – one whose ability to capture the seismic pain of young heartbreak… Read more
Photo Credit: Oliver Eclipse Since first making their debut in the late ’70s, Midnight Oil has become arguably the greatest band ever to come out of Australia. Outside of their native country, they’ve never come close to the commercial success of AC/DC or British transplants the Bee Gees. Even INXS during their heyday probably established… Read more