There are bookshelves crammed with tomes about the origins of punk rock and just as many, if not more, about how hip-hop first began. It’s refreshing then that Will Hermes, a long time music critic, manages to cover both genres as well as disco, salsa, jazz and other aspects of the music world from his unique perspective growing up in New York in the mid 70’s. Love Goes to Buildings…
The summer of 2012 will likely go down as the “Summer of 90’s Nostalgia”. Every Gen Xer (myself included) who rolled their eyes through childhood while the Boomers re-lived every inane musical milestone of their generation somehow found themselves carrying the torch over the past few months, as everyone from Everclear to Marcy Playground trotted out new records and tours packed to the gills with graying musical acts. Joining the…
Steve Buscemi’s Nucky and his corrupt Atlantic City political pals (is that redundant?) are back in the second season of one of HBO’s best dramas. If you missed the first season, adapted by Soparnos vet Terence Winter, stop what you’re doing and get caught up. It’s that good. Season two finds Nucky on the ropes after being betrayed by his brother and his new crew. There is competition in the…
I’ve always felt a little bad for California’s Incubus (though not too bad, once you factor in all the money they raked in and the hot and cold running groupies… but I digress). Coming on the radio in the mid-to-late-90’s their record label took the easy route and simply tried to cram them into a box alongside the other nu metal mooks who were ruling the world at the time.…
It’s almost frightening how good novelist Laura Lippman is at churning out top shelf books that take a twisted view of suburbia. Her latest, And When She Was Good, her 11th, showcases Lippman at her best. It’s not technically a mystery or even a thriller – though there are certainly some white knuckle passages toward the end – but the story is impossible to resist nonetheless. Helen, the protagonist, is…
As the third season of this popular realty series about bidding on abandoned storage units comes out on DVD, I’ve taken it upon myself to come up with the Storage Wars Drinking Game. Those who have never seen the show before just sit this one out. You’ll catch soon enough. Here goes: · Every time couple Jarrod Schulz and Brandi Passante toss an insult at each other, take a drink; · When the missing…
Despite the best efforts from U.S. music mags to try and recreate the same Blur vs. Oasis rivalry that their British counterparts had been able to set up and milk for years, the competition never really caught on over here. In fact, Brit Pop as a genre never really made as much as an impact in the U.S. as it did in Europe. But for those of us who did…
You know you’re getting old when those bands that first surfaced in your college years are now touring as a packaged nostalgia acts alongside fellow graying rock bands. In the case of Everclear, now celebrating 20 years as a band, that means hitting the road with the Gin Blossoms, Lit, Marcy Playground and Sugar Ray. And if audiences are permitting, Everclear can even sneak in some new songs from…
Any fear that Kelsey Grammer would always be locked into his beloved Frasier character is gone within the first few episodes of the remarkably captivating political drama Boss. With simmering tyranny, hidden behind the public mask of the genial mayor of Chicago, Grammer infuses Mayor Tom Kane with a ferocity and vindictiveness that makes Tony Soprano look like… well Frasier. The show, so far the crown jewel of cable start-up…
Like many teenage boys who grew up in the 80’s Thomas Scott McKenzie was a big fan of metal. Aqua-netted guitar gods, from the top-tier (Motley Crue and Kiss) to the B-listers (Slaughter and Stryper), he subscribed to the “if it’s too loud, you’re too old,” philosophy when it came to rock. But unlike many of us who were wooed away by grunge in the early 90’s he stuck with…
Like Robbie Williams, The Libertines and Klaxon, Kasabian is one of those uniquely British bands that does (and in The Libertines case, did) remarkably well in their own country, but only manage to pull together a small, albeit rabid, following here in the U.S. Kasabian Live at the 02 – a concert DVD and accompanying CD of the show recorded last December – should serve as proof that they…
Pisces Iscariot, a collection of b-sides and rarities from the Smashing Pumpkins, initially cameout at a pivotal time for the band, sandwiched between Gish and the wildly-successful Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, the band was about to become among the biggest rock starts of the 90’s. I’m not exactly spilling any industry secrets when I say rarities collections are seen as little more than placeholders for record companies…
It’s hard to image The Inbetweeners – the teen-centered British sitcom – getting a fair chance with U.S. audience thanks to a prudish attitude towards sex here. Violence? Bring it on; teens joking about getting blow jobs? Oh hell no, we’re Americans. Thanks to its unflinchingly bold humor and Porky’s-level raunchiness, you’d be hard pressed to name even a basic cable channel here that would be willing to put up…
Canadian (though technically American) sibling act Heart is one of those bands that has always been around, or so it seems. Despite the changing fads and musical styles, they always manage to keep up without compromising their distinct sound. So much so, that when you start to calculate all of their hits over the past few decades (“Magic Man,” “Dreamboat Annie,” “Barracuda,” “These Dreams,” “Never,” “What About Love,” among many…
I think the fact that columnist Joel Stein questioned his manliness enough to write this book in the first place is pretty damn manly (the fact that I had many of the same self doubts about my own non-sports watching, can’t take a punch, indoorsy self could make me a tad bit biased though). The non-fiction Man Made begins with Time magazine columnist Stein realizing he is about to have…
Scattered among the soon-to-be forgotten one-hit wonder releases (Glass Tiger, Stacey Q.), the last grasp efforts by fading bands (Toto, Nazareth) and the first strains of hair metal (Cinderella and Bon Jovi), 1986 saw Paul Simon release his career-defining album, a record that easily is one of the best things musically to survive the 80’s: Graceland. Since splitting from Art Garfunkel 16 years earlier, Simon had settled into…
The concept behind America, You Sexy Bitch is a pretty interesting experiment and comes at just the right time with the country more polarized politically than at any time in recent decades. The concept: liberal comedian Michael Ian Black and conservative(ish) Meghan McCain, daughter of long-term senator and one-time presidential candidate John McCain, tour the country in a beat up RV and… those ellipses pretty much show where the concept…
Breaking Bad, Mad Men and The Walking Dead may have collected the most coverage over the past few years for AMC, but the upstart Hell on Wheels proves just as worthy of praise. The series is set in 1865 in a tent city sprung up around construction of the first transcontinental Railroad. The first season focuses on the quiet, tough former Confederate soldier who takes a job with the crew…
For years I’ve been calling BS on the use of the term “realty” in this series about Kiss founder Gene Simmons, his longtime companion Shannon Tweed and their two college-aged kids. It was pretty obvious – while their show Family Jewels was/is genuinely entertaining – a lot of the situations in pervious episodes were clearly staged and came off as contrived. That being said they were always pretty innocuous and…
Considering the size of his ego, I’m shocked that Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider was able to cram his life story into just a little over 400 pages. Let’s just tick through the list of things Snider wants credit for: founding the hair metal genre (not sure why he would take pride in that one, but check); coming up with the idea for MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball; creating the first proper…