Blog Post

AC/DC has been around for long enough now that it would be easy to forget they were once a groundbreaking act, a unique melding of bad-boy posturing, winking humor, and indelible hard rock riffs. I once called them “a big, loud, rude and crude rock and roll cartoon.” While the riffs generated by the twin-guitar attack of brothers Angus Young (lead) and Malcolm Young (rhythm) are what the band will always be remembered for—and they are legion, and often astonishingly potent—the humor that charismatic frontman Bon Scott brought to their early albums gave the songs dimension, inviting the listener to…

I’ve been a fan of the Violent Femmes since I was about 14, when I discovered Hallowed Ground on cassette from my local library. Everyone knows they are one of the most significant and important bands of the entire ’80s alternative wave. Songs like “Add It Up,” “Please Do Not Go” and the immortal “Blister In The Sun” helped many a teenager get through their awkward pubescent years. After a very long recording hiatus, the band is preparing to release a brand new full-length record in 2016. Until then, let’s take a look at the catalogue of a band that…

With this, the first ever full-length documentary detailing the life and music of the legendary Elliott Smith, the man’s musical legacy comes to the forefront. Drawing together great archival footage from both Heatmiser and Smith’s solo career as well as new interviews with family, producers and close friends, you get the clearest picture of Smith yet seen on film. He was a very complex, heartfelt man with the deepest and most honest lyrics heard in a hell of a long time and wore his emotions on his sleeve and the film covers all of that and more. Tracing his story…

Elvis Presley not only changed the course of American music but of American culture as well. He did not invent rock and roll, but he helped to bring it into the mainstream. During his lifetime, he released 24 studio albums. This may seem like a small number, but it excludes his two dozen or so soundtracks and various compilation releases. To further complicate matters, his early albums did not contain any of his hit singles. Songs such as “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Hound Dog,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Love Me Tender,” and “Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear” were saved for his series…

Fountains Of Wayne’s back catalog really isn’t big or broad enough for a rankings list—or at least, that’s the premise that kept me away until now. But when a group is so talented they can literally write a Top Ten-worthy single about nothing at all—the melodic earworm “Someone’s Gonna Break Your Heart” is 3:54 of random, novelistic non sequiturs clustered around a fragmentary chorus (“Someone’s gonna break your heart / One cold grey morning”)—it’s hard to resist any opportunity to talk about them. From the strip malls of New Jersey FOW emerged in 1996 as wise-cracking suburban songwriting savants. Chris…