Four records into it and American Hi-Fi are still living blissfully in the 90’s. It makes sense, given that front man Stacy Jones played drums for Letters to Cleo and Veruca Salt, two successful 90’s alt rock bands. On Fight the Frequency, the band’s first album in five years, American Hi-Fi plays competent alt rock with plenty of sing-along choruses, crunchy distorted guitars and tight drumming. What’s lacking is simply…
Three seasons into it and The Big Bang Theory is still nowhere close to losing its rep for being one of the most original sitcoms still being churned out by one of the major networks.
Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil is pretty blunt about his reasons for penning his autobiography. It has little to do with setting the record straight, though there is a little of that, and not much to do with settling scores, though his feelings about his fellow band members and managers are pretty clear as well. Neil sees Tattoos & Tequila as simply another way to “build his brand” as his…
HBO’s latest comedy Bored to Death is yet one more example that cable, not network TV, is where you turn for original shows. The series centers on novelist and sometime magazine writer Jonathan Ames (Jason Schwartzman) who, out of boredom and on a whim, puts an ad on the Internet advertising his services as an unlicensed private investigator. The cast is rounded out by his buddy Ray (Zach Galifianakis) and…
Until the Light Takes Us is the most comprehensive doc yet on the often misunderstood Black Metal genre. The directors, Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell, moved to Norway and lived among the bands and fans for years to get access to properly tell the story of the scene and its lifestyle. The controversial genre first got media attention in the mid 90’s thanks to a rash of church burnings, suicides…
It was a little more than overkill when The Smashing Pumpkins put out their double album in 1995, so the fact that The Paperbacks, a Canadian indie pop band with little recognition outside of the Pitchfork crowd, gave their latest release the double record treatment seems downright ballsy. A two disc, 32 track album in the era of iTunes is a little unheard of in 2010.
It takes a lot to produce a truly compelling horror show on network TV, but somehow the folks behind CW’s Supernatural have managed to pull it off for five seasons now.
Aside from having one of the best band names… well ever, The Dandy Warhols also spent much of the 90’s churning out great Velvet Underground inspired psychedelic pop rock that sounded like nothing any of their other contemporaries were recording at the time. The Capitol Years culls many of the best songs from the band’s four major label records, including “Not if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth,” “Bohemian…
Conventional wisdom would dictate that The Middle would be nothing more than standard sitcom fare meant to pander to the lowest common denominator. The show is set in Indiana, a part of the country studio executives know absolutely nothing about; The series’ title doesn’t even pretend to be subtle in kissing up to the flyover states; the show is made up of a collection of safe sitcom vets Patricia Heaton…
Samuel Steward crammed more living into his 84 years, than most, juggling a handful of careers, often keeping each job a secret from his colleagues, meanwhile helping pioneer everything from tattooing to gay pornography. In the fascinating bio Secret Historian, Justin Spring paints a complete picture of a renegade and pioneer who was barely known outside of the world of gay erotica, despite being friends with everyone from Gertrude Stein…
The concept behind the History Channel’s documentary series Life After People sounds a bit dry on the surface, but is anything but. Scientists and architects go into fascinating detail speculating on the fate of monuments and iconic buildings after all of mankind has disappeared. Without man to repair cracks, remove vegetation, and basically maintain these structures, weather, evasive plants and animals conspire to dismantle these once sacred monuments.
If you have yet to hear about MTV’s Jersey Shore, let me start by congratulating you on waking up from your coma. For everyone else, the concept has already been ingrained in you thanks to pop culture. The realty show follows eight (yes, there’s more to the show than Snookie and The Situation) mostly Italian American housemates that live and (occasionally) work together at the Jersey Shore.
Just how fucked up do you have to be to get kicked out of Guns N’ Roses for being a druggie? If you’re originally drummer Steven Adler, pretty fucked up. In his highly addictive (see what I did there?) memoir, Adler with a little help from co-author Lawrence J. Spagnola, will likely garner very little sympathy from most. Yes, he had a rough childhood, kicked out of the house as…
CBS clearly had a sadomasochistic relationship with the sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine for the entire five season run of the show before finally putting the often hilarious show out of its misery earlier this year. The show, centering on Julie Louis-Dreyfus in a role even better than her iconic Seinfeld character, has her as a single mom still close with her ex-husband (Clark Gregg), and her clueless…
Fables of the Reconstruction, the third album from college rock poster boys R.E.M., showed the band was evolving toward a tighter, more cohesive sound. Sure Murmur and Reckoning will always be trotted out by indie music snobs as among the band’s best – and they were both good albums, unlike anything else that was being played at that time – but Fables of the Reconstruction was far more consistent. Songs…
ER proved years ago that it’s not always the actors that make the show. With the exception of maybe Law & Order, no other drama managed to be as successful as ER was with a revolving door of actors.
I’ll readily confess up front that I call bullshit on the entire premise of Paranormal Cops. But my cynicism aside, there is no denying that this realty show is immensely fun to watch. The series features a crew of real Chicago cops who use their investigative and forensic experience to look at alleged hauntings across the state in their free time. Forget needing to actually believe in ghosts, the real…
In 2009, TNT’s cop drama Dark Blue quietly flew under the radar while paint-by-number police shows on the major networks got the lion’s share of the publicity. Thankfully TNT has the patience to let their shows mature and ordered a second season. The series centers on Carter Shaw (Dylan McDermott), who heads up an undercover unit for the LAPD. His crew includes a trio of brooding young cops and while…
The Gallagher brothers are assholes. That’s not exactly news to anyone, but I wanted to get that out of the way up front. Yes, they thought they were God’s gift to music listeners everywhere and wanted the world to know it. Yes, they were slavishly devoted to recreating The Beatles sound on every single album. And yes, despite millions of fans around the world, the brothers were hated with just…
HBO has managed to make an entire TV show out of a guy with a huge wang.