All hail Dr. Dre, who has spent his life lying down with dogs but never catching fleas (or bullets). Unlike so many of those around him, Dre has always known that gangsta rap is music, not life. But there are so many others who foolishly think that they are somehow…
Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein and famed author Nora Ephron probably had big literary aspirations for their son, Max. But he went and started a Los Angeles punk band, the Actual, instead. Over the past few years, the trio — comprising Bernstein on guitar and vocals and brothers Jeremy and Aaron…
That Guy — you know, the one at the show who thinks it’s funny to drunkenly bellow, “Play “Stairway to Heaven’!” — is finally getting what’s coming to him. His comeuppance will be delivered by Lez Zeppelin, who’ll actually do it. This New York-based act proves that it’s okay to…
Along with Cooder Graw and Cross Canadian Ragweed, Jason Boland and the Stragglers are part of a talented crop of like-minded country-rock bands that popped up like virulent weeds in 1999. Along with the hugely popular Ragweed, Boland used to have a home base of Stillwater, Oklahoma (he now lives…
Joe Leste has fought on long after lesser men would have waved the white flag. He first turned heads as the pretty-boy frontdude in Bang Tango, a grad of the late-’80s L.A. rawk scene. The Bangers put out intermittently entertaining major-label discs in 1989 and 1991, and while neither caused…
In portions of the globe with a surer grasp of umlauts than is regularly exhibited here, this Swedish export is also known as the Esbjörn Svensson Trio. Pianist Svensson, joined by drummer Magnus Öström and bassist Dan Berglund (whose name is blessedly free of extraneous diacritical marks) specialize in acoustic…
During the frantic post-9/11 anthrax scare, Anthrax the band issued a statement saying that it was considering changing its nameto Basket Full of Puppies. Which should have been no surprise: The legendary thrash quintet has always been great at tempering social awareness with a morbid sense of humor. Formed in…
No one could have predicted the enormous worldwide influence the Wailers were to have when Bob Marley began singing as a teenager in the early ’60s. From the rough streets of Kingston’s infamous Trench Town ghetto, where the Wailers got their start, to selling millions of records and packing theaters…
After roaring out of the gate a few years back, The Last Seen (due at the hi-dive on Thursday, January 12, with Matt Boyer of Sun Kil Moon and Triplight) kept a pretty low profile for most of 2005. If their recently completed three-song effort is any indication of things…
Gary “Mani” Mournfield enjoys the distinction of having been part of two of the most important bands to emerge from Britain in the past twenty years: the Stone Roses and Primal Scream. Both acts helped create the zeitgeist of their time, particularly the Stone Roses, whose impact on British rock…
Visitors to Atlantic Records’ Internet home will find the Nappy Roots listed among the imprint’s roster of artists, and an affiliated website that’s linked there remains fully functional. But despite appearances, the performers have moved on, and rhymer William Hughes, who goes by Skinny DeVille, makes it clear that the…
Approximately 67,518 discs were issued in 2005. Of the thousands I managed to listen to, fewer than fifty truly moved me — but among those, I kept coming back to the following albums: The Mars Volta, Frances the Mute (GSL/Universal). When the Mars Volta played before an intimate crowd at…
Planes Mistaken for Stars is dead sexy. Never mind the unwashed hair and tattered jeans or the unkempt beards and the dirt under their fingernails; on stage, the act’s animal instinct rivals the pretty-boy posturing of other groups and looks every bit as good. Some may mistake Planes for emo,…
At first glance, Little Fyodor is a total fucking wack job. On second glance, he’s still pretty much a wack job. On third glance, however, you might start to discern a certain complexity, eloquence and even sanity at the core of his spastic and mangled songcraft. Sitting down with his…
All hail Slayer! The monstrous sound of Reign in Blood inspires to this day. Unfortunately, much of what it inspires is adolescent claptrap like the majority of death metal. Even though most fans of this “scariest” form of music are pimply dipwads, every once in a while the music attracts…
Music hasn’t always been a commodity. Long ago, it was a more collective and intimate art form played with friends, neighbors and relatives — a tradition that the O’Brien Family Band keeps alive and kicking. Comprising father Dan on guitar, mother Janette on bass and kids Maura and Kyle on…
Adam Freeland has a knack for reinventing himself. The main man behind the nu-skool breaks movement of the mid-’90s, Freeland, who’s also remixed tunes by such acts as Nirvana and the White Stripes, has helped bring rock and roll back to the dance scene. Taking that aesthetic a step further,…
As Curtis Armstrong’s Miles tells Tom Cruise’s Joel in the 1983 smash-hit comedy Risky Business, sometimes you just gotta say, “What the fuck.” In Joel’s case, this phrase is employed with a shrug of the shoulders and a sly smile: “What the fuck — let’s go for it.” In mine,…
In 2005, pop music was rock music. Between Kelly Clarkson’s tarted-up “Since U Been Gone,” Ashlee Simpson’s raspy, Courtney-Love-after-a-bender vocals and Hilary Duff’s collabs with her Good Charlotte boy toy Joel Madden, even the biggest Top 40 starlets liked their guitars cranked up to a sassy eleven. Elsewhere, rockers in…
My undying love for Dudes With Guitars Who Think Way Too Much About Girls is now a critical liability, as Rockism has recently become grounds for public execution. I can only hope my final hours (before I am personally decapitated by Missy Elliott) are as graceful, poignant and unabashedly melodramatic…
If hip-hop had a theme song in 2005, it wasn’t “Gold Digger” or “Lose Control” or “Candy Shop,” or any tune that contained Mike Jones’s phone number. Instead, it was that old standard by the Original Rapper himself, Lou Reed: “I’m Waiting for the Man” — the man in this…
On the surface, 2005 was another banner year for hip-hop. There were at least a couple of classic albums (Beanie Sigel’s The B. Coming and Kanye West’s Late Registration) and a slew of great ones (Madlib’s The Further Adventures of Lord Quas, Young Jeezy’s Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101,…
