I was helping run the sound at a small club outside of Houston when I first heard. In between sets, I spun one of my favorite Clash records, and some young punk kid shot me a stupid thumbs up. “Cool tribute,” he said after coming over. I gave him a look that said, “What the hell are you talking about?” I guess he figured it out, because then he said, “Didn’t you hear? Joe Strummer died last night.”
For guys my age, Joe Strummer was more …

For a lot of girls, there is always that one best friend they can count on. The friend who you’ve had since at least high school, who knows everything about you. The friend you’ve done really stupid things with; the friend who, even in the midst of a giant storm of annoyances, you automatically called when everything was going wrong; and the one friend (who you aren’t fucking) that you can stay up all night with and not get grumpy. So imagine a day …

The title of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s latest album doesn’t lie: amongst the traditional folk giants with whom he once ran, Elliott really does stand alone. Woody Guthrie, his mentor and friend, is, of course, long dead; as is their old mutual traveling buddy Cisco Houston. Pete Seeger, who frequently shared the stage with Elliott and counted him as an influence, performs only rarely because of age. And then there’s the man whose early persona was so indebted to Ramblin’ Jack that his …

Whenever the average music listener thinks of a man named King associated with the blues, it’s always B.B. gracefully brandishing his Lucille. And there’s not really a problem with that, B.B. King is the living king of modern blues, after all, but if ever there was a blues King who deserved to be noticed, it’s another man named Albert.
Albert King’s unique guitar style makes him perhaps the most distinctive guitarist of the blues pantheon; he was a left-handed guitar player who never restrung his …

I’ve said it once; I’ve said it a million times – there is an art to releasing an interesting and good live album. Look at the Reigning Sound’s recent Live at Goner Records; that record is absolutely necessary for any Reigning Sound fan, as well as anyone who has wanted to get into the band. It does a fantastic job of capturing the rock and roll howl of Greg Cartwright and the high-energy sounds of the Reigning Sound in concert. But enough about one …

Sondre Lerche does not fit into my stereotypes of a Norwegian musician. He does not play death or black metal. He does not kill his fellow bandmates. Nor has he ever (at least to this reviewer’s knowledge) burned down a church in the names of Satan and rock and roll. And until now, it’s never mattered: Lerche’s prior releases, Faces Down and Two Way Monologue, were artful pop records which cemented the then-teenager as a musical phenom. Those albums found the right mixture …

A few weeks ago, the Sex Pistols answered their inevitable nomination to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with what many fans trumpeted as an especially “punk” gesture: an open letter, hand-scrawled and atrociously spelled, declaring their contempt for the corporate institution and vehemently declining to appear at the ceremony. And it was pretty punk of them, insomuch as our concept of “punk” in the 21st century has been informed by mass-produced bondage pants, vague notions of “sticking it to the man” …

As anyone who has had the misfortune of taking a postmodern theory course knows, nothing can escape its history. And usually, this historical entrapment is the biggest downfall of most modern music: singers, as we know, have a knack for getting ensnared in the coil of their influences. So with that in mind, you might be tempted to ask who is this Destroyer, with his Tyrannosaurus Rex and Ziggy Stardust feel?
Well, listen up kids: despite the fact that this album was loved by …

I have long held the opinion that with every album a band releases, there should be change, evolution, and growth. It’s for this reason that there’s a lot of people out there who would probably consider me to be a punk rock heretic; but the fact of the matter is, when it comes to Southern California’s Bad Religion, I just prefer the newer stuff to the old. This isn’t to say that I can’t appreciate their classics, but with every album there’s a noticeable …

There are few bands in recent underground music history who command – and deserve – as much respect as Mudhoney. Survivors of the late-’80s/early-’90s Seattle explosion, singer Mark Arm, guitarist Steve Turner, drummer Dan Peters, and bassist Matt Lukin (replaced in 2001 by Guy Maddison) have been at it since 1988, when their seminal EP Superfuzz Bigmuff accidentally helped to father grunge with its blend of fuzz-drenched Stooges dynamics and ironically detached punk nihilism. In the years since that debut, they’ve plowed an …