Interviewer: Now, you mentioned empathy for others, would you say that is what motivates you to make the music that you make? Conor Oberst: No, not really. It’s more a need for sympathy. I want people to feel sorry for me. I like the feel of the burn of the…
At a time when the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is lobbying Congress to pass a law that would make all recording artists nothing more than “workers for hire” (essentially making them even less than a label employee), it’s refreshing to see there are still people like Dan and…
Let’s say you’ve got an ace band going. You’ve got some songs and a self-released CD. You’ve done bits of regional touring over the past few years. You’ve accumulated a fan base and a good amount of laudatory press. People are talking about your band, and the sense is something…
Women have a lot of advantages over men. They live longer, they can use both sides of their brains at once, and they can sound delicate when singing rock songs. (No, this is not a treatise on “Women in Rock.”) Male singer-songwriters who aim for fragility inevitably end up sounding…
There’s something a little ridiculous about being in a rock band. Maybe that’s because there are only so many poses that can be struck with a guitar, only so many emotions that can be conveyed over three chords, and only so many things that haven’t been done to death by…
In the current climate of uncertainty and unrest within the recording industry, where big record labels eat other big record labels in perpetuity, and indies retract themselves into self-contained genre-of-the-month stalwarts, it’s nearly unthinkable for a 12-year-old band to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch. But…
Listening to contemporary rock ‘n’ roll records these days is like drinking in the afternoon to avoid boredom; the idea may sound appealing at first, but after indulging you find yourself either nodding off like grandpa or saddled with a dull headache, or both. I mean, c’mon. When was the…
Neko Case is still mostly asleep when she picks up the phone for her first interview of the day. Her timbre is foggy, not at all the crystalline voice that makes her second record, Furnace Room Lullaby, one of the great unexpected pleasures in country music this year. (Make that…
Like the best mid-’60s work by Bob Dylan, the first three albums by the Clash redefined the rock ‘n’ roll landscape into which they were unleashed. Between 1977 and 1979, the British punk foursome issued The Clash, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, and London Calling, along with a brilliant string of…
See, Gene Simmons’ publicist never gave me a specific time to be available for his call. She just said, “Oh, he’ll call you sometime Monday or Tuesday.” Then she told me that if I missed his call, he would leave a number on my machine that I could use to…
As a rule, instrumental rock is lame, particularly instrumental indie rock. The results are usually mathematical-sounding numbers or the wanks of virtuosos trying to show off the scales and modes they learned at Berklee. Dirty Three is different. And in this case, different is good. More affecting than a hundred…
Paul Revere and the Raiders was the first beat group signed to the once rock-phobic Columbia label. This fourplay of Sundazed reissues captures all the crucial periods of the band’s career and, in the process, makes a pretty compelling argument for reevaluating the musical legacy of these current-day state fair/casino-circuit…
When soothsayers foretold that the end of the century would bring our human community to ever higher levels of enlightenment, I don’t think Fox’s Secrets of Street Magicians Finally Revealed was what they had in mind. Or figuring out what space-age adhesive was holding up Jennifer Lopez and her Grammy…
Let’s be smug. Smug and proud of it, even. Yes, those of us who favor underdog music inevitably experience existential loneliness as we thumb desperately for substance through a collection of Marilyn Manson and Celine Dion albums at a party. Yet somehow we feel superior to the sorry suckers who’ll…
Lords of Acid is into whips. And chains. And leather. And European hotties who whisper naughty come-hithers in English. And sex with multiple ambiguously oriented partners while feeling the effects of various illegal substances or using a marital aid or two. Ya know, the usual. Yet without sex or lyrics…
On his debut long player, Kid Koala, the 26-year-old Canadian turntablist wunderkind, takes the usual stacks of instructional records, comedy LPs and obscure grooves and assembles them by hand — no computer sequencing — into something both amusing and technically dazzling. It’s a demonstration of technique so crafted that, if…
A July night is arguably the worst time to see a rock ‘n’ roll show in Phoenix. Even though it’s half past 11, the temperature is still pushing triple digits. Tempe’s Boston’s nightclub is drenched in the lingering humidity of the afternoon’s monsoon; the smell of sweat and beer palpable…
“Punk Rock Karaoke,” reads the flier, “50 classic punk tunes, 1977-1985. We play. You sing.” When I think karaoke, I hear the Eagles’ classic-rock perennial “Take It Easy” getting an unintentional but just pummeling. I see a mike-handling softy with Bud Light-fertile blood wearing a cowboy hat and sporting a…
In today’s installment, I get called a “hapless shmo” by Gawker, which I take as a huge compliment. Gawker: http://gawker.com/5256086/ted-nugent-is-the-new-mike-tyson…
It’s about 15 minutes into the conversation with local power poppers Sugar High when it starts to happen. The feeling that I’ve somehow ended up in an episode of The Monkees, or maybe even been cast in a local remake of A Hard Day’s Night. It could be singer Adrian…
As far as I know, I am not queer. And if I thought I were, nothing would change much, really. I would have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend. Or maybe I wouldn’t. My parents might look at me with furrowed brows for a while, but they always did that…
“It’s kind of like God let us come back,” muses drummer Marnie Martin, “but only if we played together and really kicked ass!” Martin is posing a metaphysical theory that explains how the four current members of Portland’s Pinehurst Kids survived individual near-death experiences — Martin was nearly electrocuted; guitarist…
