Music

You’d never think of using words like “violent,” “aggressive” or, especially, “badass” to describe ’70s prog rock. That is, unless you saw the 1998 film Buffalo 66. In the movie’s pivotal climax, actor Vincent Gallo shoots a man in a nightclub to the pulverizing instrumental portion of Yes’ “Heart of…

You’ve heard the sound of drum ‘n’ bass. So has your grandma. She probably just doesn’t realize that as she’s glued to the TV, her Chihuahua on her lap, the music playing as the fancy new Ford Focus rounds the corner of the oceanfront highway during that cookie-cutter car commercial…

God only knows what anyone loafing around Arlington, Virginia-based Inner Ear Studios thought upon hearing playbacks of Jets to Brazil’s just-released second album, Four Cornered Night. Recording home to bands such as Fugazi, Bluetip, the defunct Jawbox (whose former front man, J. Robbins, has produced both Jets to Brazil discs)…

“We didn’t expect to sell out the [Madison Square] Garden; we didn’t expect to do it in two hours,” says Bruce Dickinson, the erudite front man for long-in-the-tooth sorcery ‘n’ riff masters Iron Maiden. The Maiden, it seems, is back, and, according to Dickinson, is in rare form and at…

Pig Latin (Triple X)and Big Sandy and the Fly-Rite Boys Night Tide (Hightone Records)

As embarrassingly primitive as it may seem, rock ‘n’ roll is foremost an expression of rebellion against firmly held parental values. The primary distinction between pop and rock is that parents may tap their feet to the former but must, by God, detest the undiluted medium and message of the…

“We are revolutionaries, y’nuh,” says Bob Marley, early in Rhino’s video recollection of the creation of Catch a Fire. True in a double sense: The Wailers were emphatically political where most reggae bands of the day were not, and they were the first to aggressively construct a crossover album with…

Texas rawk quartet Speedealer has endured its share of hassles, legal and otherwise. First there was the cease and desist order. Then there was the bankruptcy. And tonight, lead singer and guitarist Jeff Hirshberg is trying to shake some unpleasant bug he woke up with this morning, plus the cell…

Acouple of weeks after Melissa Ferrick won a Boston Music Award for Outstanding Female Singer/Songwriter in April, she wrote about it in her online journal. But instead of waxing poetic on the magic of her moment — when her name was announced, maybe, or how she felt when she stepped…

What you see before you — two brothers sharing a stage in front of the adoring handful, two boys singing songs about football, their grandfather’s birthday and doing the dishes — is the opening few minutes of any episode of VH1’s Behind the Music, the happy tale before it mudslides…

The timbre of Sonny Vincent’s voice carries a genuine been-there-barely-survived-it tinge, like some grizzled conspiracy theorist you’d find seated next to you at the counter of a Denny’s. Vincent chooses words carefully, often pausing mid-sentence, and you can almost hear him shaking his head as he recalls bits of his…

Ah, the ravages of suburban youth. Hours spent in the company of your own worthless and unattractive self. Screaming to be noticed and praying to be invisible at the same time. Long nights where you ride into town with your equally self-conscious friends to do nothing in particular, waiting for…

For far too long now, The Band has rested on the dusty shelves of musty intellectuals who treat the works of Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel and Rick Danko as though they’re history lessons instead of rock songs. Punch up one wonderful Web site devoted to The…

Never let it be said that St. Paul, Minnesota, ain’t got no soul. If there’s any doubt as to whether the R&B underground is thriving in the northern climes, the brothers Tillman have stepped up to correct your ass. Harold Martin Tillman, a.k.a. Har Mar Superstar, and older bro Sean…

The power of Steely Dan always sprang from the clash between the sonority of their musical craftsmanship and the cynical, corrosive spirit that fueled their lyrics. So it’s appropriate that the defining moment in this 60-minute look at the making of the group’s 1977 masterwork Aja comes during a catty…

Ian Pooley has been around the block too many times to be lumped in with the current wave of German techno artists, most of whom are either obsessed with paring down their music to impossibly minimalist levels or simply milking the same repetitive sound. Pooley began his musical career with…

Remember the old music-industry joke, “What’s the difference between the Titanic and (insert record label of choice here)?” That’s right, darling, the Titanic had at least one good band. But just because scads of major-label employees continue to be shown the door, it doesn’t mean the brass have refrained from…

In three weeks, the Black Heart Procession finishes the solo leg of its U.S. tour and hooks up with Man or Astro-Man? for a series of dates in the Northwest and along the East Coast. Man or Astro-Man?, as you might be aware, plays manic, intergalactic surf music, Dick Dale-on-crank…

The deal with the Mermaid Avenue recording sessions was, if you wrote the music, you got to sing the song. So Nora Guthrie was a bit perplexed to find Wilco had recorded a Billy Bragg number, set to her father Woody’s lyric, “Joe DiMaggio.” As Bragg tells it, she confronted…

Any aspiring metalhead who doesn’t know Jack is shit out of luck. That’s because the cherub-faced teenager with the spiked hair named Jack Osbourne has become, merely by his bloodline, a big wheel in the music industry. His mommy happens to be Sharon Osbourne, the woman whose summer rock tour,…