Those looking for unpublished secrets about AC/DC or even just a basic backgrounder about Australia’s loudest export are bound to be let down if that’s their sole reason for picking up Rocker’s and Rollers. Yes, Johnson is the front man of the phenomenal successful hard rock band and you know he has a slew of backstage stories that would make Motley Crue’s Dirt read like a Judy Blume book in…
Like pairing a Sex Pistols t-shirt with a pair of old cowboy boots, Dallas-based band The Von Ehrics play cow punk in a way that everyone from Willie to Glen Matlock would approve off. Fast, raucous and loud, Two Foot Stomp finds the band at its finest with the release of their fourth album. You can still hear a slight twang in Robert Jason Vandygriff’s vocals that sound simply sublime…
Remember how cool it was when the writers behind True Blood trotted out the shape shifters in season two to compete with the vampires for our attention? With season three they’ve jacked the bar up pretty high by bringing out a whole parade of supernatural creatures. The series picks up with Sookie (Anna Paquin) turning to a werewolf named Alcide (Joe Manganiello) to help her rescue her vampire beau Bill…
Kids in the Hall fans must be in heaven with this massive release. On 20 DVDs, they have managed to cram in all five seasons of this highly influential Canadian sketch comedy series (that’s nearly 800 sketches).The show has been off the air for more than 15 years, but the skits hold up remarkably well (the same can’t be said for most of the recent SNL sketches that don’t even…
It always felt a little disingenuous to label Great White as a hair metal band. Yes they were popular during glam metal’s late 80’s heyday and yes they were featured right alongside bands like Poison and Ratt in the pages of Hit Parader and Circus magazines. I’m sure their concert riders even called for cans of Aqua Net at the time, but if you listen to their music, it was…
Let’s get this out of the way up front: if goofy, often absurdist humor is not your thing, stay far away from Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! In fact, it’s probably best you stop reading this review and just move on to more productive things. Ok, now that those born without a sense of humor have moved on, can you believe these guys have found a channel brave…
Coming across as a modern day version of That’s Incredible! or Ripley’s Believe It or Not, at least once in every episode of Stan Lee’s Superhumans there’s an “is that real?” moment. Co-hosted by Stan Lee – creator of comic heroes like The Hulk, X-Men and Spiderman – the show centers on real people with real, if odd, physical abilities, like being able to withstand extreme heat or conduct electricity…
Five years seems like a long time to wait nowadays for a new record, when any laptop can convert into a portable recording studio, but Nicole Atkins gets a pass. On Mondo Amore, the first real follow up of new music to her 2006 debut (the EP released in 2009 was all covers), Atkins ratchets up everything from the writing to the music, turning in an effort that eclipses her…
Ever since Lester Bangs OD-ed in 1982, there’s been a massive void in the role of “well-known rock music journalist”. Neil Strauss, thankfully, has finally come along to fill that role well. If there were any doubt after reading his legendary Motley Crue book The Dirt (not to mention the other rock bios he’s helped pen for Marilyn Manson and Dave Navarro), Strauss’s latest Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead,…
Bands like Journey and Styx may have hijacked the 70’s nostalgia movement, but it’s musicians like Leon Russell that prove that decade was a lot more than tight jeans, poufy hair and neutered arena rock, dripping with saccharin. Lyrically Russell’s right up there with Bob Dylan and Neil Young with a voice just as distinctive as… well Bob Dylan and Neil Young. The 16 track Best of Leon Russell collection…
T.J. English has written, quite possibly, the most compelling historical fictional of the year. The only catch is that it all really happened. With the story telling-style that could rival any bestseller fiction author currently battling it out on the sales charts right now, English uses a reporter’s eye to pull in the most fantastical and interesting details of a racially-charged New York city in the 60’s and 70’s in…
Though technically not a documentary, No One Knows About Persian Cats might as well be. Using a cast of real Iranian underground musicians and filmed on the sly across the country, the director and actors clearly draw from their own experiences on how to get fake permits and passports to tour out of the country and how to hold shows/parties and rehearsals without getting arrested. The film, which won the…
The Low Anthem proves yet again why they’re critical favorites on their latest effort, Smart Flesh.
Billy Joel’s decades long career has mirrored other pop musicians, most notably Neil Diamond: starting out a thoughtful writer/performer churning out one great song after another, before sliding into the over-produced slickness of the late 80’s, early 90’s churning out basic, paint by number radio ready hits with little effort or thought (“The River of Dreams”), laying low for awhile and finally hitting legendary status embraced by everyone from the…
Sammy Hagar may have miscalculated a bit if he was looking to bolster his aw shucks good guy reputation with his just-released memoir. Before the book came out he was pretty much a clean slate, with many having little or no opinion about the red rocker. Sure he got dinged a bit for stepping into David Lee Roth’s shoes, but contrary to popular belief, he was a far better songwriter…
A show like The Venture Bros. could only exist on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Equally as impressive as anything the channel has turned out before from Aqua Teen Hunger Force to Metalocalypse, The Venture Bros. centers around the clueless brothers Dean and Hank Venture, their madman/ultimately an ok guy scientist father and his bodyguards.
You’d be hard pressed to find a network with a stable of characters more screwed up than Showtime.
Though it takes nearly half the book to draw out complete sketches of the main characters, in The Intimates, first time novelist Ralph Sassone has created two of the most compelling characters in years.
Far from running out of gas, Top Gear has found a nice cruising speed by the time season 14 and 15 hit the air (both are just now coming out on DVD).
At a time when everyone from Collective Soul to Spacehog was able to garner a ridiculous amount of radio and MTV airplay for so little talent, just by tacking the suffix “alternative” onto their press materials, a band that truly defined “alternative” – The Jayhawks – never really got their rock star moment.