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: Jamie Wdziekonski Amyl and the Sniffers are named after a certain type of drug that has been used recreationally for certain naughty purposes since the ’70s. Vocalist Amy Taylor says of the chemical “So you sniff it, it lasts for 30 seconds and then you have a headache – and that’s what we’re… Read more
We are heading toward the end of 2021 and it has been…real. As Shakespeare said, “If music be the food of love, play on.” The following records have kept our bellies full and our hearts pumping. Listen in hopes of better times. In no particular order, here are our top ten rock albums of the… Read more
In the rock era alone, there have been many, many cover versions recorded and released. From live-only interpretations to deep album cuts, to #1 hits (even the Beatles, who we’ll get back to in a minute, started as a cover band). In some cases, artists’ cover songs are well-known just because the original already proved… Read more
Photo Credit: MTV VMAs This year’s MTV Video Music Awards (which aired live on September 12th) tell us pretty much all we need to know about how the state of rock ‘n’ roll is 2021. Actually, we can even go all the way back to 1997: The award category that had once been “Best Heavy… Read more
Photo Credit: Getty Images/Ringer illustration It doesn’t even take a million streams on Spotify or three sold out nights at Madison Square Garden to be labeled a “sellout”. Virtually any commercial success in music will inevitably invite claims that an artist has “sold out” and ironically enough, this label is most likely not to come… Read more
Photo Credit: RCA Records On When You See Yourself, their first new album in five years (and eighth studio effort overall), Kings of Leon offer up fifty minutes of tight, mature, intelligent rock ‘n’ roll, most of which can be described as “atmospheric” but almost none of which comes off as incidental. The marathon-titled opening… Read more
Cage The Elephant at The Wells Fargo Center ‘Turn Blue’ Tour 2014 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania The Black Keys at The Wells Fargo Center ‘Turn Blue’ Tour 2014 Photography by: Steve Trager
Photo Credit: Jason McDonald When the twenty-first century began, the garage band revival spearheaded by bands like the White Stripes looked to become the defining rock trend of the moment. Unfortunately, the Seattle grunge scene of a decade earlier had left popular culture somewhat (and needlessly) obsessed with geographic centralization, so because the garage rock… Read more
Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen With their latest release, the Black Keys already begin messing with our heads before we’ve even listened to a single note. The album’s title, “Let’s Rock”, appears on the cover exactly that way – in quotes. Just what are we supposed to make of this? The phrase itself is both generic… Read more