A favorite critics’ punching bag for decades, Dennis DeYoung has become something of an antihero for his former detractors ever since VH1’s Behind the Music: Styx special put his inspired lunacy in context. With the Kilroy Was Here tour, he single-handedly destroyed one of the top-grossing arena bands by hinging…
The safe money is on local heroes and special guests Authority Zero to be the night’s big crowd-pleasers; they will certainly be kicking the ass of headliners Pepper, the first punks out of Hawaii since the Waikikis. Anyone expecting a night of luau music can leave their expectations with the…
If old-school metal fans view Soulfly as once-removed from singer/guitarist/songwriter Max Cavalera’s earlier band Sepultura, now they can view Soulfly as once-removed from itself. With its fourth album, Prophecy, released in the spring of last year, Cavalera reassembled the band with all-new members handpicked from Ill Niño and Primer 55,…
Carson Daly prefaced Citizen Cope’s network TV debut with some blubbering comparisons to Bob Dylan and John Lennon, which Cope obliterated by performing a first-rate single (“Bullet and a Target”) that sounded like neither. Clearly the new Dylan/Lennon analogy has more to do with the engineer’s cap Cope sports on…
If you heard a quiet tear falling as December 31 ushered in yet another stupid year, it might have been gear heads sobbing over the end of an era. At that auspicious moment, Quantegy, the last analog tape manufacturer in the United States, decided to decorate its gates with chains…
It’s the third week of January. By now, if you’re like everyone else we know, you’ve broken your New Year’s resolution — popped that Vicodin, lost your gym membership card, hit the drive-through at Jack in the Box. We know a guy who resolved not to make any resolutions –…
The flyaway pages of the calendar bring us to 2005, midway point where some exciting new music has got to emerge to atone for this decade’s stagnant first half. You can take heart that the appearance of Kongos on our local scene is a sign of things finally getting interesting…
If you’ve been waiting for someone to have that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup accident that ends with, “Hey, you got electronica in my rock and rap,” look no further than Cross Platform, five great tastes that might taste great together. Dubbed “an experiment in rap, funk, rock, soul & electronic,”…
Before landing a record deal in 1978, the Police dyed their collective locks blond and posed as a punk band for a bubblegum advert. That wasn’t the only time a pop trio got its break via a TV commercial. The Dollyrots actually are a punk bubblegum group — one that…
Q: Are we not metal? A: Yeah, sorta. Both bands on this bill are enormous-sounding, but they achieve their audio girth from dissimilar means, neither atypical metal. Most of Isis’ albums are three-fourths instrumental and all-fourths conceptual. The band’s previous CDs were sold in room-thrashing flavors like Oceanic and Celestial…
As far as bands with unassailable names go, you don’t get any better than Awesome. See how we’ve bolded the word Awesome right at the top of this paragraph? Every reviewer writing up this band’s debut CD or one of its shows is gonna be doing the same thing whether…
Radioabandonment Tour is more like it. Nobody’s singing “We Want the Airwaves” anthems anymore, and since Joey Ramone’s look-alike Howard Stern announced he’s abandoning broadcast for satellite radio, the end is drawing near. Radiotakeover.com has been an invaluable source for independent music on the Internet, and its smorgasbord tours are…
If you’ve ever wondered, “When does retro get old?”, you’re probably not going to see Deke Dickerson and then eat at the 5 & Diner after the show. Dickerson’s albums look like the kind of lost late ’50s/early ’60s artifacts you almost never see at thrift shops anymore because eBay…
You can kiss the usual questions goodbye when interviewing a band comprising a 17-year-old girl and her dad. Ask about the sex and the drugs and you’ll find yourself retreating to something wholesome like the rock ‘n’ roll to keep from blushing before they do. Luckily, the novelty of a…
How can you pack this much arena rock into one arena? Wait 35 years and you can have Keith Emerson as a supporting act. In his day, rock’s key showman would stab daggers into his synths, strap himself to a Steinway piano spinning upside down, and rig his piano with…
Von Bondies
Figures. The minute the Donnas put a cartoon of themselves on an album cover, they stop being one. Gone are the uninterrupted sneers that meant either a) the Donnas are gonna bend all you matchstick men to their whim (“Are You Gonna Move It for Me,” “40 Boys in Forty…
When people think of musical satirists, they think of “Weird Al” Yankovic song parodies when they should be thinking of Neil Innes, a guy who composes original music that slyly sends up artists and genres. He plied his craft in the ’60s with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, the British…
Log on to the Gloritone Web site and you’ll find yourself redirected to www.massivestars.net, home of Massive Stars. Basically, it’s two-thirds of Gloritone (Tim Anthonise and Scott Hessel minus bassist Nick Scropos, who’s now in Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers) with new bassist Chris Serafini (Ghetto Cowgirl, The Stereo) and…
Gaze upon the cover of the Last Vegas’ sensitively titled Get Hip debut, Lick ‘Em and Leave ‘Em, and you’re face to face with four hairy dudes who look as if they’ve spent the last six tour stops showering at a gas station. Actually, the music catches that Pennzoil shampoo…
“We are the Sciannas/We drink beer instead of wine/We are the Sciannas/We wear suits and ties.” Any band that pens its own theme song is begging to have its own cartoon series with corresponding lunch box. And the Sciannas don’t disappoint — the band’s theme is a melodic doppelgänger to…
Mush is a Los Angeles indie label specializing in electronica deconstructionists, all with names that sound like overnight FM DJs. Among the acts on the Mush Tour lineup, Her Space Holiday comes closest to having conventional song structures — Marc Bianchi’s whispering delivery will spook out Elliott Smith fans waiting…
The Silos were alternative-country before alternative-country was cool. Yes, that means the ’80s, when country music was just as tarted up and synthy as hair farmer bands were. Before Uncle Tupelo put a stamp on it and called it No Depression, there was the Silos. Led by Walter Salas-Humara, the…
