Yes, Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings, and yes, George Harrison had a thriving solo career, most of it on his own Dark Horse Records, after the Beatles called it a day. This DVD — also gone solo after originally being included as a bonus disc in last…

The recurring mental image I get while listening to High on Fire’s latest molten sludge-metal opus, Blessed Black Wings, is that of Lemmy Kilmister being strapped into that electric chair on the cover of Metallica’s Ride the Lightning, then bellowing a soul-paralyzing shriek as the searing juice jolt smokes his…

Band documentaries can be great for showing a different side of a group whose music you know well, or just filling in the personality blanks for a group you only really know in passing. For me, MxPx falls into the latter category — I was aware that they’re a long-running…

Talented as he is, Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy has never particularly struck me as “fun.” Same goes for R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, unless he’s (allegedly) throwing yogurt around an airplane cabin. But Minus 5 singer/commandant Scott McCaughey, he of Young Fresh Fellows, Tuatara, and late-period R.E.M. fame? Now that dude oozes…

Let’s eliminate any potential confusion right off the top: The Explosion is not the Blues Explosion. Besides, the Explosion couldn’t be more different from Jon Spencer’s garage-rock project. This Boston five-piece digs into punk rock the way it was done in Berkeley’s Gilman Street club, D.C.’s F Street club, and…

If you didn’t know otherwise while listening to this spellbinding EP, you might swear it’s a recently unearthed Alan Lomax field recording from the 1930s rather than the product of a contemporary alt-folk singer-songwriter. Seattleite Jurado generates that no-fi vibe through the use of “salvaged” reel-to-reel tape (in all its…

What? You’ve never chain-smoked three packs of unfiltered cigarettes, gone without seeing daylight for six weeks straight, sauntered around town with a dime-store noir in the back pocket of gasoline-soaked jeans, nodded off in the corner in a heroin stupor, or screeched through the dodgiest part of town in a…

Rather than just presenting a compilation album to promote their own roster, the folks at Five One — a tiny, emo-ish label based in Santa Monica, California — approached some of their favorite musicians and asked them to come up with solo tracks exclusively for this project. And so this…

Grandma may finally be out of traction after that unfortunate reindeer hit-and-run last December, but she’s liable to have a stroke if she hears the lyrics to Blink-182’s prison carol “I Won’t Be Home for Christmas” this holiday season: “Even though the jail didn’t have a tree/Christmas came early/Because a…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Not since the Great Split of 1972 — when the Jefferson Airplane splintered into Hot Tuna and the Jefferson Starship (later, just Starship) — has debate raged so passionately about the co-existing offspring of a revered band. The revered band of which we’re speaking is At the Drive-In, and when…

Monster Magnet main man Dave “Space Lord” Wyndorf could give Donald Trump a run for his money in the firing department. He sent founding guitarist John McBain packing shortly after the 1992 release of Spine of God, the New Jersey outfit’s shroom-damaged, psych-metal sludgebeast of a debut album and the…

Yellowcard belongs to the very exclusive club of emo-leaning pop-punk bands named after soccer violations that prominently feature a violinist who does onstage back flips. Gymnastics aside, though, the presence of Sean Mackin (the Itzhak Perlman of the Warped Tour set) is hardly a gimmick; his adroit bow-handling adds buckets…

Life has given Mike Ness plenty of opportunities to fold his hand. The 42-year-old Social Distortion leader has battled heroin addiction, seen the inside of a jail cell more than once, gotten dropped from a major label after failing to rack up the “hits,” and watched an endless parade of…

Dear Abby: I’m a 20-year-old singer from Canada. People used to say I was a phony because the Matrix wrote all of my songs, and because I wore wife-beaters and thrift-store ties and acted all punk rock even though I originally wanted to be a country singer just like Shania…

“My,” said Little Front Row Kid to the Michigan trio onstage getting ready to play, “what big amplifiers you have.” “The better to cause your frontal lobe to rupture and make blood, bone, and gray matter ooze painfully out of your ears with, my child,” said John Olson. “My, what…

“I don’t want to grow up,” spat Milo Aukerman, singer for pop-punk trailblazers the Descendents, nearly 20 years ago. Now two of their descendants — Good Charlotte and Sum 41 — are doing just that after coming out of the gates as snotty, Hot Topic-ed kiddy-punkers. Peep Good Charlotte’s new…

Page Hamilton’s first big break came in 1992, when his band Helmet’s sophomore album, Meantime, went gold and set the template for ’90s punk-metal. The front man’s second big break happened this past August, when he shattered his collarbone after smashing into a tree while mountain biking in Oregon, thereby…