Past Stories
Band of the Week
There is a cadre of adjectives used to describe every death metal band that has ever been: brutal, crushing, intense, ferocious, savage, merciless, etc. But this mere collection of words isn’t enough to describe the crunc...
GIVE THE COWBOYS SOME ACID
What if David Lowery had never left Redlands, never moved up to Santa Cruz, and never founded the greatness that is Camper Van Beethoven? Would he have wound up a steroid-juiced bouncer in some IE titty bar? Running a bait-and-...
KIDS JUST WANNA GET FILTHY!
Mash-ups! Electroclash! Ah, the sonic wonderments of 2004. But if you take a listen to Trevor Yagen, you just might believe him when he tells you these sounds are the soundtrack of today’s burgeoning alternative music nat...
KIDS JUST WANNA GET FILTHY!
Mash-ups! Electroclash! Ah, the sonic wonderments of 2004. But if you take a listen to Trevor Yagen, you just might believe him when he tells you these sounds are the soundtrack of today’s burgeoning alternative music nat...
The Weekly Jive
Gram Parsons with The Flying Burrito Bros—Live at the Avalon Ballroom 1969 (Amoeba Records)
Though he was country when country wasn’t cool, Gram Parsons was also cosmic when cosmic absolutely was, and the LSD/twang ...
Memento Mori
It is difficult not to view the blues as an almost entirely historic idiom. Since being largely abandoned by the majority of African-Americans who created it, the blues, as a musical force, is essentially dead and gone. In a w...
Band of the Week
Just when it seemed like the Inland Empire music scene had coughed up its last good band and was content to breathe its death gasp (a sound weirdly similar to almost every Dashboard Confessional song), we stumble across Corona ...
RAGGED BUT RIGHT
The blues, like jazz and country music, have become so diluted and misshapen in recent years that all three essentially exist as pitiful ghosts of their formerly commanding selves. With a scarce handful of genuine blues forces ...
The Weekly Jive
Siouxsie Sioux, Mantaray (Decca)
Despite her less-than-promising punk beginnings—bumbling through the Lord’s Prayer at London’s 100 club in 1976 and loitering awkwardly behind the Sex Pistols during their lege...
The Opportunity to Scream!
From their stereotypical art school beginnings to their fizzle-out end, the Avengers could have possibly been the poster-children for the rock & roll meltdown that was the late ‘70s punk rock explosion. Renowned for t...
The Commuter’s Soundtrack
Black Francis, Bluefinger (Cooking Vinyl)
Nobly, Frank Black tried his derndest to put together a Pixies reunion album on the heels of the big 2004 group hug, “but the quick fuck was awkward,” he states, and as of S...
The Weekly Jive
Insane Clown Posse—Jugganauts: The Best of the ICP (Island)
The sad part is that Insane Clown Posse became at least ten times more significant than The Beatles ever did, because while The Beatles hypothesized love as a pa...
Closet 909s
“You guys have been the greatest crowd on this tour!”
“We love you, Pomona. We love coming back here!”
“Riverside really is like our second hometown!”
How many times have you heard the above...
The Bells Toll on Rock & Roll
Gather round grand-laddies for a yarn o’ the musical kind. The Cauldron’s a-bubblin’ stew, the record player’s a-spinnin’ our hits and the neighborhood ghouls are a-hauntin’ (hope them kiddie...
The Weekly Jive
SERJ TANKIAN—Elect The Dead (Serjical Strike/Reprise)
A baroque barrage of schizophrenically shifting ingredients—exotic harmonies, red-faced rants, muscle-bound beats, burly guitars, glacial piano and orchestral gi...
Liquored up and Lacquered Down
Within the oft shameful recidivism of rock & roll bands who uphold a commitment to “retro”-based music, Dixie-fried goons Southern Culture on the Skids stand gloriously apart. Although resolutely anchored in tra...
The Touch of a World That is Older
Back in 1982, Wall of Voodoo singer/songwriter Stan Ridgway’s quirky, nasal voice burned its way into the American consciousness through an unlikely outlet—“Mexican Radio.” The catchy but strange ...
The Robopop Kaleidoscope
The terms “musical genre” and “stylistic preference” aren’t entirely applicable to an act like Joshua Tree-based Gram Rabbit. Trying to ascertain their next creative direction is more or less an ex...
The Bells Toll on Rock & Roll
Gather round grand-laddies for a yarn o’ the musical kind. Cauldron’s a-bubblin’ stew, record player’s a-spinnin’ and ghouls are a-hauntin’ (hope them kiddies appreciate swag!), so that rocki...
Goin’ Home: a tribute to Fats Domino, Vanguard
Goin’ Home: a tribute to Fats Domino, Vanguard
Fats Domino may seem almost like a distant, prehistoric myth today, but the natural fact is that the New Orleans piano man was both one of rock & roll’s earli...
The Bells’ Toll on Rock & Roll
Musically we lean toward the heavy, always have and probably always will, which is why Led Zeppelin trumps the Beatles in our record-collecting obsession and the deep-Sabbath grunge sound forever satisfies. Having never e...
Liquored up and Lacquered Down
</p>Within the oft shameful recidivism of rock & roll bands who uphold a commitment to "retro"-based music, Dixie-fried goons Southern Culture on the Skids stand gloriously apart. Although resolutely ...
Sea Change
Normally, when an otherwise predictable band wants to wiggle out of a niche they bring in a perception-elevating string section as a sign of their utter maturity and epic sophistication (Guns N’ Roses, Earlimart, Metallic...
WILD MAN WOODY!
Woody Allen, the internationally renowned filmmaker who can lay claim to having produced a trove of oft-hilarious, nuanced and—despite the fact that his own whine-happy persona is more often than not the main attr...
Band of the Week
Divide the Day seamlessly fuses guitar-driven punk rock riffs and hardcore intensity with melodic arrangements, and there is a constant battle between soothing, harmonic vocals and wrath-induced hardcore growls and scream...
Band of the Week
Personal drama and scheduling conflicts have a way of keeping good bands from ever releasing recorded testaments to their musical ingenuity. But if you’re IE local Janette Kantzalis (of The Chubbies fame), you’d get...
SHEIK YERBOUTI LIVES!
The offspring of famous singer/musicians rarely do their daddies proud. If you’ve heard the juniors Sinatra and Hank, you know what I mean. But Dweezil Zappa is paying tribute to his father in a way that does justic...
Band of the Week
Most post-rock or proggy rock bands blur the line between boredom and apathy just enough to get away with pushing album after album of formulaic songs that strive to be a dissertation on the State of Mopey Nation, but ins...
