“Whenever I see pop groups perform,” says John Stubbs, “I wish that I could see that same level of fun at classical music performances.” Stubbs should know — he spends a lot of time around …

“There aren’t any country music clubs in San Diego that hire bands,” says Sara Petite, “unless you go to Lakeside. And then, it’s all Top 40” or what she calls “radio country.” A singer-songwriter and …

Dave Mustaine says, “The NHRA [National Hot Rod Association] heard the song, and they loved it. They wanted to use it.” Megadeth’s Endgame was released September 15 and features a song about drag racing. “1,320” …

Does anybody remember Lost Sounds from Memphis? Cheery tunes, dark themes, noteworthy members. Alicja Trout played in the Clears; Jay Reatard and Rich Crook both came from the post-punk thrash band the Reatards. In 1999, …

I first got tipped off about the Electric Six when a friend sent me links to their videos on YouTube. Funny stuff, in a lowbrow sort of way. Adam Sandler could front this band. E6 …

Linda Perry might not be the only pop star to emerge from the streets of San Diego. In the late ’80s, the ex–4 Non Blondes singer was a homeless teen in Balboa Park. Two years …

Local musician and media-relations manager David Moye calls himself an “insensitive singer-songwriter.” Moye, 44, has worked as a reporter and an editor at the WirelessFlash, a San Diego news agency. Moye says that recent coverage …

It was close to midnight, and there was an old guy out on the street scrubbing plastic restaurant floor mats. The restaurant was closed. I said hello, we made eye contact, and then he said …

The Ditty Bops’ song “Walk or Ride” starts off sounding as if it’s going to be an environmentalist-lesbian-cycling anthem. That would make sense: Ditty Bops leaders Abby DeWald and Amanda Barrett are, after all, a …

They call themselves the Mashtis: Itai Faierman is back with a new band after a four-year hiatus. Before he took off, Faierman spent a lot of time on the local singer-songwriter stages, combining his intricate …

Sit down and pour yourself a big cup of melancholy, and while you’re at it, set some extra places at the table tonight for panic, desolation, and a dark and hellish nightmare or two. That …

Local acoustic picker Jim Earp went to the annual Walnut Valley Music Festival in Winfield, Kansas, this year and came home with honors. Earp says he tied for fourth place in the International Finger Style …

When As Tall as Lions played the Casbah this summer, Dan Nigro told the audience that he’d been waiting 27 years (basically, his entire life) to rock the Casbah. “It was a joke, you know? …

The Rolling Stones, who have not recorded anything of consequence for 20 years, have become a road show with their best songs behind them. No matter how large an arena spectacle, musically the Stones are …

Too bad for San Francisco’s Dodos — some critics were not happy with the changes that producer Phil Ek brought to their sound on Time to Die. They whined that Ek cleaned up the rough …

What did the critics at Pitchfork.com hear when they vetted Why There Are Mountains, the debut album from New York’s Cymbals Eat Guitars? They heard the rumbling, screeching, and howling of an electric guitar (front …

A guitar once owned by Jimi Hendrix is back on the market following years of legal dispute that ended recently with this terse statement: “Experience Hendrix LLC makes no claim of ownership concerning the Fender …

Growing up in Portland, Oregon, Esperanza Spalding says she got the notion to make music her life’s work at the age of four. This, following a television episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood in which the …

Last year filmmaker Eddie Martin announced plans to make a biopic of the life of the late Bon Scott. Not a bad call. As former lead singer of AC/DC, Scott’s fame was palpable at the …

When Wired magazine gave Girl Talk a Rave Award in 2007, I think Gregg Gillis was still working his day job as a biotech engineer, jetting off to weekend concerts around the globe, his coworkers …

Detroit is where the heart of rock and roll is still beating. Rock magazine Creem was founded there, and the critics who worked for that mag (including the late Lester Bangs, a former San Diegan) …

The number of tribute bands your band has spawned could be seen as a gauge of success. Take Van Halen, for example. “Just in L.A.,” says Brian Geller, “there’s us and three other [Van Halen–tribute] …

I don’t care that Venezuelan pop stars Los Amigos Invisibles sing in Spanish and weave cumbia rhythms and congas into their music — they are the sound of American dance floors in the early 1980s. …

Best not to go to the Good Asian Drivers expecting to hear the sassy pop in their YouTube video “I Kissed a Girl — The Real Gay Version,” because it’s not them. That’s not even …

In high school, a lot of my son’s spare time was spent on his Xbox 360, playing video games of mass warfare with a synapse-frying soundtrack of metalcore. He once said that his favorite metalcore …

The music press at large may define him as one of the founders of the hybridized genre that would eventually come to be known as pop (or smooth) jazz, but Grammy-award-winning guitarist Earl Klugh doesn’t …

In the mid-1990s, Jay Farrar founded a group he called Son Volt after he broke with Jeff Tweedy and left Uncle Tupelo, the band they had formed together. Son Volt, often called an alt-country band, …

Lady Dottie and the Diamonds is an indie-rock band retrofitted with blistering soul licks and fronted by an old-school ground-stomping R&B scorcher. They won in 2005, 2007, and 2008 for best blues at the San …

The Scorpions, a German heavy metal band, date back to the ’60s. Around that time, the trend for hard rock guitarists was to break from the blues-rock tradition by playing fast, long, clean solos that …

There’s a kind of primal pleasure in watching a slight Asian woman systematically manhandle an array of expensive keyboards onstage. That’s one way to describe watching Hiromi — a jazz-fusion pianist — and her unique …

When White Rabbits hit the scene in 2007 they were a burst of sonic energy, slightly disorganized but with enough collective animation to rival powerhouse acts like Arcade Fire. Fort Nightly sounded like the work …

The history of air guitar has got to include a footnote for Joe Cocker. In the late 1960s, Cocker, a British rock star, was mainly known for two things: A voice that — although agreeable …

A recent picture of the band Propagandhi shows four guys, a few of them approaching middle age, who look more about golf or office jobs than flat-out aggressive rock and roll. Founded in Manitoba in …

In time of relationship meltdown, what man would not want to cop some Ben Folds attitude? “Wish I hadn’t bought you dinner,” he sings in “Song for the Dumped,” “Right before you dumped me/ On …

The Cliks (not to be confused with the Clicks, a three-woman punk outfit from Brooklyn) are a “queer-identified” (this from the band’s management) Toronto power-pop trio. They are fronted by a transgendered androgyne whose name …

Q: How would you describe what you do? A: “Curator and devotee of experimental, classical, electronic, and improvised music,” says Bonnie Wright. Since 1995, when she opened the doors to the Spruce Street Forum, Wright …

Tucson is a place of dust and red squatty rocks and ancient cacti and retirees playing golf and a desert heat in the summer so intense that buying a tank of gas becomes a spiritual …

From the first downbeat of a Mike Doughty , you know you’re in for something crafty and powerful and maybe a little strange. He’s a flawless modern craftsman, and that encourages a listener to embrace …

Dynamite Walls first crossed my radar in 2007, after the band, while on tour, unknowingly spent a night in a rented home that had once been the site of a mass murder. That same year …

You gain a sense of the desert rat in the lyrics of Calexico, a Tucson-based alt-rock band: “Four in the morning the sidewalk’s asleep/ Dogs on the porch, spiders on the leaf/ Shipwrecked by night, …

Even though they’re from Colombia and do not sing a word of English, Aterciopelados (which translates as “the Velvety Ones”) are straight out of the rock-and-roll playbook of the America of the late 1960s. With …

Anya Marina, little-girlish, standing waiflike and rib-thin on Jimmy Kimmel’s electric-blue stage is somewhere in between her alter ego Miss Halfway and her metamorphosis into a full-blooded rocker chick. The song she is performing — …

Branford Marsalis is a year older than his trumpet-playing brother Wynton. Critics first took notice of Branford during his tenure with Art Blakey. Later, Branford toured with Sting, won Grammy awards, and upped the hip …

The Kinks did it once, that I know of — played the first few minutes of their show in pitch dark. This served to ramp the house up into a loud frenzy. By the time …

There are days that I O.D. on indie rock, especially when the newer bands put out stuff that seems headed toward ’80s import, meaning the dark days of synth and ugly haircuts. But then some …

With the demise this year of Los Angeles radio station Indie 103.1, one wonders whether indie rock is doomed. Indie 103.1 left broadcast for the Internet, citing low ratings and outside pressure to blend mainstream …

If you don’t already know Primus, then there is no easy way to describe them. When they were an active band, Primus was one of my daughter’s favorites. She was around 15 at the time …

A friend of mine summarized Pat Travers best when he said, “Somewhere during the ’80s, ‘Boom Boom’ replaced ‘Louie Louie’ as the party song.” He was speaking of “Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights),” a …

I’ve had to revise my first impression of Susan Tedeschi. Over a decade ago, when she was touring the country via chick band tours (e.g., Lilith Fair), I thought Tedeschi was just another out of …

As a pop culture observer, I hate to hang a performer’s career image on a single recording about roadkill and for the sheer gusto with which he sang it, but so be it. In 1974, …