Of Note
Peter Wolf aside, the real spark plug in the J. Geils Band was a harmonica player named Magic Dick. His solo blowout “Whammer Jammer,” performed with all of the random energy of a beehive on …
In the mid-’90s, when every other musician in the musician-rich city of Portland, Oregon, was cultivating a lo-fi sound and a low-budget look, the Dandy Warhols sounded, dressed, and acted like rock stars. In the …
It was at X-Fest at SDSU several years ago — blink 182 was scheduled to headline the evening, but Sprung Monkey, another local band, owned the afternoon. Sprung’s popularity was beginning to soar on the …
I leafed through a fashion magazine supplement recently and saw yet another feature on Goth style (fashion magazines love Goth), this one featuring a gallery of style inspirations over the years. And right there was …
The Wedding Present is an old, seasoned British band that you are not likely to have heard of unless you are a devotee of college radio or frequent the sorts of clubs that book indie-rock …
Vains of Jenna is part of the Swedish (yes, Swedish) sleaze-rock revival…sleaze rock being an American phenomenon from the ’80s known for cheap lyrics and fast guitars. Call it glam metal, big-hair rock, whatever. It …
Rolling Stone once wrote that Alejandro Escovedo is his own genre. I agree, with this caveat: Personal as it may be, Escovedo’s music sounds familiar. Not familiar in the way of the plagiarist, mind you, …
Someday, someone will write a musical history of the first decade of the 21st Century and come up with definitive answers to these questions: What was with all that grandiose indie pop? The 17-member bands …
“It comes up all the time,” John Gourley says via telephone when I ask him to explain the name of his band. They call themselves “Portugal. The Man.” “It’s pretty off the wall, but at …
The dollar is weak and the euro is strong, and the streets of American cities are humming with the sound of European tourists — often with their arms full of shopping bags from the Apple …
A few years back, rock critic Chuck Klosterman listed Matthew Sweet as one of the most accurately rated (as opposed to over- or underrated) artists in rock history, saying, “Every Matthew Sweet album has only …
Carla Bozulich is probably best known as the leader of 1990s band the Geraldine Fibbers, who played a sprawling, majestic, cathartic kind of music that could hardly be contained by as humble a term as …
Mr. Furia explains that in Barcelona, an invitation to dinner before nine in the evening is considered early. This is in response to my question about Spain’s late-night club scene. “Our daily clock,” he says, …