Of Note
Alone in the mix: that’s the first thought that came to mind when I listened to Okapi Sun’s dance/electro-pop combo platter of tribal drums, keys, synths, and the bane of all good music — vocals …
Most will remember Peter Murphy as being the Godfather of Goth and the face of Bauhaus. Not that he’s done much to broaden that observation. Last year (minus any of the original members), he toured …
Go back and listen to 1964. King Khan and the Shrines is what the British Invasion would have sounded like if only they knew more back then and had deeper influences other than American blues, …
Can we agree to like Southern Culture on the Skids for different reasons? I think we’ll have to. There’s an overriding country white-trashy rock appeal, the B52s-on-speed angle, and the rockabilly-surf attitude. Still others of …
“I’m tired, man,” Bobby Bare Jr. says by phone from his home in Nashville. “I just finished a great rehearsal.” Bare was born there; a slight twang sculpts his speech by shortening certain words and …
“Our best gig,” writes Drew Gino Zollo, “was opening up for a sold-out David Allen Coe show right here in Ramona.” The Sickstring Outlaws are a rugged country band based in the North County. “We …
Imagine Mike Ness fronting ’80s-era Metallica. That describes the most recent turn in the progression of Thousand Watt Stare from punk roots to something approaching metal-ish hard rock. They look like punks on metal, for …
Not a bad way to begin a career in the music business: three years ago, the debut album Cerulean earned Album of the Year Honorable Mention recognition from Pitchfork. The A.V. Club liked the CD, …
I’d only seen Marc Aliana playing guitar in a couple of local bands, both loud. There was a stint with Jon Goodhue, and a tribute band called the Red Not Chili Peppers, in which Aliana …
After seven years in business, it’s hard to think of Portland’s Black Prairie as just being a Decemberist’s side project, but that’s why they started, and technically speaking, that is what they remain. It all …
William Collins, the bassist, once told an interviewer about the time he arrived at George Clinton’s house to audition for Parliament Funkadelic. He described a situation more suited to the Addams Family. The front room …
Howler is a good-time rock-and-roll quartet from Minneapolis, nothing more, nothing less. Just good ol’ garage-rock cast in the mold of Social D, only nicer, but not as nice as, say, Maroon 5. Not so …
The Men is a five-piece Brooklyn guitar-rock band, somewhat new, and in touch with their inner Huey Lewis. Not the same band as the Men, a ’90s era Santa Monica group with two women as …
Simon Green, 38, is a British DJ/musician. He lives in New York now, but he was born in Hampshire and moved to Brighton. That’s where he began deejaying in clubs in the late ’90s. Whatever …
Oceanside Sound System: not a stereo repair shop. The North County band started in 2009 as a four-piece with guitarist Ben Blessing and drummer Sid Sloth from Irieside, a jam-rock-reggae-hip-hop band, and a singer named …
Jimmy Ruelas, from Linda Vista, plays a resonator guitar made by National Steel. Those kinds of guitars always sound vaguely out of tune to me, but then, it is old technology that dates back to …