Straight outta Sweden comes Witchcraft, which — despite its black-metal name — rocks it fairly old school and classic. The sound these four Scandinavian longhairs have been making for the past seven years combines Blue Cheer/Iron Butterfly psychedelic stomp; early (pre-synth) Rush proggery; the mystic, sun-baked riffage of Kyuss and…
In the recently released Kurt Cobain documentary About a Son, Nirvana’s music is noticeably absent. Instead, director AJ Schnack lets Cobain tell his own life story by splicing raspy narration taken from phone interviews between the musician and author Michael Azerrad with artful, rich scenes of people and places from…
Every week, we’re going to be reviewing a music DVD. We kick off with Twisted Sister’s The Video Years…Twisted Sister used to scare the shit out of me. When I was 8 years-old, I would lay on my bunk bed in the dark, blasting the Under the Blade album, imagining that huge, leather-skinned monsters with oozing eyeballs were going to come creeping out of the shadows to eat me.
With their knee-high boots and go-go dresses, it would be easy to dismiss the Gore Gore Girls as more gimmick than substance, but these four hard-rocking, Gretsch guitar-loving chicks out of Detroit Rock City have more in common with Kiss than they ever will the Spice Girls. Equal parts Motown,…
Ever wonder what’s haunting the heads of musicians? We do, so in celebration of Halloween, we figured we’d try to scare up some tales of the supernatural from a few of our favorite artists. And though we couldn’t conjure any tales about the ghosts of Jim Morrison or Kurt Cobain,…
Like looking at a middle-aged man’s comb-over, sometimes we have to stare into another’s mirrored shades to appreciate the ridiculousness of our pretensions. You can lie to others about it, but in your heart, you see the greasy, chicken-stained fingerprints of the truth. Southern Culture on the Skids recognizes the…
Spandex tights? Check. Can of Aqua Net? Got it. Copy of Ratt’s Invasion of Your Privacy on vinyl? You betcha. Sounds like you’re locked and loaded for this week’s edition of Future Shock, which focuses on the often-outrageous genre of heavy metal. From dank and dirty death rock to glass-shattering superstars who’re known for their screaming talents, we’ve put together a list of some of the “just announced” concerts from a multitude of metal acts that will be visiting the Valley in the upcoming months. So strap on your leather pants, knock back a few cans of Schlitz, and get ready to rock out with your cock out.
Mavis Staples may be 68 years old, but the righteous fire that distinguished so many of her rich, bottomless vocals during an extraordinary 50-plus-year career continues to burn brightly. When asked why the songs of struggle that make up We’ll Never Turn Back, her moving new CD, need to be…
Until now, Elton John, Philip Norman’s 1992 unauthorized biography of the piano man, has stood as the definitive word (also updated in 2000 as Sir Elton: The Definitive Biography, for those who missed the point). That’s the tome where we first learned about “Elton’s little moments” — his frequent tantrums…
Were you one of the thousands of hopefuls who submitted demo tapes to BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel? Perhaps he didn’t play it, let alone include it on his annual Festive 50 list. But consider this: Did you describe your music as “jazz”? Boast about your saxophone player? Profess…
Rather than espouse the many virtues of Weird Al Yankovic’s live show, I’ve elected to let my inner child write a brief “review” of the spectacle and follow it up with an off-the-wall, exclusive interview I had with Weird Al a couple weeks before his Phoenix show.
It was the eve of the new millennium at Joe and Maxine Zawinul’s beautiful place in lower Manhattan. The music of Marvin Gaye filled the home — “What’s Going On,” as I recall. Zawinul had invited me to a small family celebration, and all my other plans for the big…
So witty, so inquisitive, so downright loquacious is Elisa Ambrogio that a telephone interview with her threatens to unravel at any given moment, to turn obliviously tangential — not unlike the music she’s made, until recently. A question about authors who influenced the Magik Markers singer/guitarist’s graphically provocative lyricism on…
The best descriptors for Devendra Banhart’s latest album, Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, come in pairs; one at a time doesn’t do justice to its heady tensions or its creator’s labyrinthine mystique. The record is kinetic yet placid, pensive yet droll, erratic yet strangely cohesive. The fact that singular phrases…
One of the mantras that emerged from the hippie counterculture movement of the ’60s was “never trust anyone over 30.” When you’re young, idealistic, and wearing rose-colored raver sunglasses to protect your eyes from the early-morning sunrise assault, that seems all right — especially since 30 seems impossible, a nonreality…
Heavy Metal: A Box Set Review in Three Acts: Act One:
[Jo Momma’s living room. Some empty bean bag chairs are stacked against the back wall. A tapestry for Mötley Crüe’s Theatre of Pain album hangs above them. As the curtain rises, Pontius Arse comes running into the room, carrying a really cool box that’s made to resemble an amplifier, with a knob that goes to 11. He is followed by “Diamond” Blackie Rocket]
Since the rest of the blogosphere is racing right now to review Rainbows, I figure I’d be a sheep and do the same thing. Let’s do a time-lapse chronicle of the proceedings. First listens, of course. While addled by fatigue. And I haven’t checked YouTube or bootleg sites for which of these songs have been released before, so excuse me if some of this is old news. (I saw Radiohead in a high school auditorium in 1997, so I have cred.)
It was a typical Tuesday morning. I was browsing through the used videocassette section of my local public library, musing over a fifty cent copy of “Hanging Up” when I heard a familiar phlegm-filled cough. My insides full of forebodings, I slowly turned around and faced my old high school nemesis and drinking buddy, Doug “Creosote” Huggins. His rangy limbs had not diminished in size and his shoulder length auburn hair was still flecked with pieces of orange carbohydrate from his job at the Cheezit cracker factory. “So, Neff,” he sneered in the inimitable Creosote way that so drove the women mad, “I see your taste in videocassettes has not improved.” I laughed in a manner that I hoped sounded courageous. “Not improved nothing Creosote. I was just considering purchasing this copy of Yankee Doodle Dandy, winner of three Academy Awards and item number 100 on the American Film Institute’s ‘100 Years…100 Movies’ ranking list.” He appeared dumbstruck but quickly recovered, putting on a contemptuous face. “And is your stomach still as weak as it used to be?” he asked, referring to the many shameful defeats I had suffered at his hands at the drinking table. “No,” I said, speaking boastfully. “Now my stomach is lined with iron unlike yours which is lined with cotton candy.” Once again he appeared dumbstruck but quickly spat out a retort. “Oh? Then perhaps we should test both your taste in videos and your digestional abilities with…a video-watching contest on the popular internet video site ‘You Tube’?”
We’d like to take a moment to let y’all know that Future Shock is brought to you by “The King of Beers,” Budweiser; American Apparel; and Halo 3 for the Xbox 360. (Excuse us for a moment, we have our tongues stuck in our cheeks).
And just why have we whored out our blog to corporate interests, you ask? Well, we’ve been doing the underpaid music journalism thang for way too long now, and have finally decided to barter our street cred for a big fat paycheck, just like some of the musicians and bands that announced upcoming concerts here in they Valley over the next few months. In other words, this week’s edition of Future Shock is all about the sellouts, baby. This isn’t a critique of their musical talents, per se (as we’re fans of each and every one of these dudes), but instead is an outlining of those who’ve sold their souls to the company store.
Like commandos descending from helicopters in the night, Turbonegro’s boisterous irreverence lands just in time to deliver a pinprick of humor to puncture rock’s ballooning self-importance. Theirs is a crowd-pleasing blow to the crotch of angst-ridden over-emoters and other phonies, resurrecting the idea that music should be fun and a…
Queens of the Stone Age cofounder/former bassist and Mondo Generator leader Nick Oliveri likes to play concerts in the nude. But, as Oliveri can readily attest, his, shall we say, “naturalist” approach is not without its hazards. He very nearly landed his naked ass in a Brazilian prison after Queens…
As he tries to launch a social movement that encourages people to address global warming and throw parties at the same time, Perry Farrell, usually chipper and optimistic in interviews, doesn’t mince words about the gravity of the crisis the human race now finds itself in. New Times caught up…
