You’d think making a comedy about rock would be easy, but Spinal Tap pretty much used up most of the good jokes. The video store shelves are lined with decent attempts to mine laughs from the world of rock music that never really manage to elicit more than a few chuckles (viewed sober, of course).
The Loved Ones may just be the most underrated band in punk rock today. Despite a handful of stellar records including last year’s stand out Build & Burn, paint by number bands like Fall Out Boy and Paramore manage to snag magazine covers and stadium tours, while The Loved Ones continue to slog it out on the punk rock club tour circuit.
British comedic writers Steve Lowe and Brendan McArthur have made a career of sorts bitching about ‘modern conveniences’ through a collection of books. The best bits have been sandwiched into Is It Me or Is Everything Shit? with additional observations added in by Daily Show writer/American Brendan Hay. For the most, the book has some pretty hilarious, astute observations. Like their straight to the point take on Hare Krishnas: “Hare,…
The White Stripes they aren’t. Though rock duo of Michael Van London and Rhiannon Jones may share the same stripped down guitar/drums lineup and gender makeup as The White Stripes, the comparisons pretty much stop there. The garage rock duo from Los Angeles can turn out sludge rock, but they hardly offer an original take on the genre. From the very beginning, with the rote album opener “Da Bomb,” the…
Dave Thompson is the Andy Rooney of music criticism. Bushy eyebrows aside, Thompson puts his stake in the ground early on in his latest manifesto, I Hate New Music, with the outrageous claim that rock music stopped being good sometime around 1978. Seriously. Like the aforementioned 60 Minutes alum Rooney rambling on about not getting as much coffee in the can as he did in the good old days, Thompson…
Johnny Cash was punk rock before the term was every created. So it’s only fitting that modern punk rockers would honor the man with a tribute album.
There’s something about acoustic guitars that draws former punk rockers like moths to a flame. Frank Turner, former member of Million Dead, unplugged after his band dissolved about three years ago and decided to go the route of Billy Bragg, writing lyrically smart, occasionally politically-tinged folk rock songs.
It’s amazing how desperate label reps get in trying to sell you on their latest signings. From the moment they were added to indie emo label Dog House Records, folks tried to remake these Oklahoma teens into a pop/punk band. Though they put out catchy pop tunes, someone thought adding the suffix “punk,†to every reference written and spoken about the band was a great was to try and add…
Eighteen years and still going for some unexplainable reason. New Orleans party band Cowboy Mouth have managed to take a handful of trite party songs, a strong word-of-mouth live show and shape a pretty decent career as second rate Jimmy Buffetts. On Fearless, their ninth full length, the band continues to confound. Filled with 12 mostly novelty songs about everything from big girls (Belly) to Kelly Ripa (Kelly Ripa), the…
Based on interviews alone, it’d be easy to dismiss The Killers as little more than naive keyboard rockers with laughably bombastic quotes about world domination or simply millennials who just discovered Depeche Mode and David Bowie and have a few more minutes left on their fame stop watch.
