As a 17-year-old skateboarder up in Anchorage, Alaska, where I worked at the only skateboard shop in town, I was sprung on the skaterock that was the soundtrack of my crew’s four-wheeled adventures. Bands like Suicidal Tendencies, Agent Orange, and especially JFA (Jodie Foster’s Army) provided the extra energy we…
Listen, boys and girls: A long time ago — yes, before you or I or the Toronto music scene was even born — some very wrong people had a very bad idea. Children, these very wrong people reasoned, are small and silly. Let’s make small, silly music for them. And…
Fall Out Boy bassist and songwriter Pete Wentz can’t stand being limited by 4/4 time. He has aspirations of becoming the next Russell Simmons. “People didn’t just buy a Def Jam record,” he says. “People bought a culture.” The multitalented entrepreneur talks about the need to create a similar counterculture…
For years, the Wu-Tang Clan has epitomized hip-hop’s gritty underground, pushing the art form to another level with a street mentality and a plan to build an empire. As solo artists, its members have produced mixed results (lest we forget Method Man’s acting career), but consistency has been a strong…
All hail Boogie Down Productions! Their track “The Bridge Is Over” cemented the diss record and rap feuds as a legitimate branch of the art form! From 3rd Bass to Kool Moe Dee to 50 Cent, a rapper’s best work will come in the form of a well-thrown bitch-slap. But…
On the very morning of this interview with Albert Hammond Jr., one of the two guitarists in The Strokes, there appeared in the New York Times a review of that band’s March 1 performance at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City. The Times’ music critic Kelefa Sanneh opened the…
Flogging Molly’s “Screaming at the Wailing Wall” may be the best real punk song in half a decade. A blazing rush often accompanies the best political rants, and “Screaming,” from the band’s latest album, Within a Mile of Home, is no exception. With nods to the Sex Pistols and The…
When it comes to traditional Irish music, what’s not to love? Sometimes it’s reverent and beautiful; other times it’s clearly penned under the influence. See if you can choose the correct lyrics to complete the verses to classic songs below. 1. I’m sick in the head and I haven’t been…
It’s got to be a bitch being a young band called March Against Fear. You’ll inevitably be mistaken for Denver’s Fear Before the March of Flames, which has a record deal with Equal Vision Records and boasts almost 27,000 friends on MySpace.com. And you might end up with some very…
Hundreds of miles from home, Lance Linderman’s having his hair straightened while a buxom makeup girl dusts his nose with powder. Linderman, the lead singer for Desole, Phoenix’s rising indie act, is standing in a smoky warehouse sandwiched between sweat shops in Los Angeles’ seedy garment district, where his band…
“I feel like I come off as a crackpot,” local singer-songwriter Brodie Hubbard admits to me. We’re discussing his travails as a young solo artist in a city that’s not especially conducive to such endeavors. “It’s really easy to make a joke out of me. I’m not a real musician.”…
Armed with a terrific new album, Pandelirium, Nashville’s Th’ Legendary Shack*Shakers are bringing their greasy, Southern-fried combo of blues, punk, polka and old-school rockabilly — presented live, like a Pentecostal tent revival meets Theater of the Absurd — back to town. We caught up with Shack*Shakers front man/ringleader Colonel J.D…
Rock stars love to fight each other — not just battles of words, but honest-to-goodness physical beatdowns — almost as much as they love to snort drugs, hump groupies, cash fat checks from the record label, and, oh yeah, write songs. We’re reminded of this fact because Scott Stapp (the…
All hail Jurassic 5! They were a breath of fresh air, bringing pleasure and fun back to the type of hip-hop listened to by indie-rock fans. But they did not come alone — and the group that came with them, Black Eyed Peas, has turned from a fun bit of…
When Kurt Cobain growled “Here we are now” in the early ’90s, he unwittingly sounded the death knell for the classic speed-metal thrash scene. Fifteen years later, most thrash acts have hemorrhaged crucial members and credibility, and either thrown in the towel or converted. Look no further than any barf-worthy…
Tired of all the ho-hum musicians our local scene has to offer? You know, boring bands who’d rather blast their tracks while standing on stage? Then peep the perversely non-plastic performing plaything known as Treasure Mammal. This one-man musical dynamo is gung ho like G.I. Joe, giving new meaning to…
This melodic indie rock quartet sounds a bit like another local band, radio rulers Jimmy Eat World, whom SLP once joined on a Midwest tour that included a gig in a barn. The A-side, “Hold Your Flashlight,” is a chugging, hard-edged pop number full of images of summer camp, canary…
One of the things that’s great about local hip-hop artist Jawa is that he doesn’t give a crap about mainstream success. He could have had it — Priority Records had him working with artists like Brian McKnight and Method Man in the mid-’90s — but he didn’t like being told…
Here’s a band that could easily contribute to the soundtrack that G.G. Allin, Stiv Bators, and Johnny Thunders are probably making in Punk Rock Hell. Big Vinny & the Cattle Thieves sound like old-school gutterpunks, spewing about anal rape and violence from a graffiti-covered garage. “I Was a Teenage Premature…
There’s such a fine line between stupid and clever. — David St. Hubbins, This Is Spinal Tap Metal has never been a genre of music generally associated with rocket scientists, but perhaps no band in the past quarter-century better illustrates the central truth of the above quote than the meatheaded,…
Vinyl records may seem as ancient as the Pyramids in the evolutionary chain of audio technology — the phonograph record, the eight-track tape, the cassette tape, the CD, the MP3 — but yet they’ve somehow survived even while cassettes and eight-tracks went tits up. Before shareware programs like Napster and…
All right, kids, since we haven’t had much of a winter here in the ‘Nix (not that we ever do), I’ve got a cold blast of reality for you. Your rock star aspirations, the getting signed to a major label or even a cool indie, the touring with My Chemical…
