Blog Post

2019: A Hundred Percent

It was a year in which I was reminded more than once that music is a healing force, or can be if we let it. It’s a time out from day to day concerns, an opportunity to visit a different part of our brain and let art take over. One thing about every single artist whose work I’m about to highlight—they didn’t hold back. They gave you a hundred percent of their truth, whether they chose to pair it with three chords or a 13-piece prog orchestra. As a listener, that’s all I can ask.  Ready For Prime Time Award…
Read More

Clarence Clemons: Who Do I Think I Am?

A philosophical look at the E Street Band sax man’s life, the documentary Clarence Clemons: Who Do I Think I Am? takes on a mortal tone when the Big Man is talking about himself and how others look at him. He’s basically trying to prove that he’s more than Bruce Springsteen’s sidekick and one of the most dynamic sax players that ever lived. Production on this film started before Clemons’ unfortunate passing, and while the black and white remembrances are a nice touch, it’s best to hear about the man from the man himself. It’s clear that the original intent…
Read More

Anti-Nowhere League: We Are the League

If you are unfamiliar with the Anti-Nowhere League, where the hell have you been hiding? Only one of the most controversial punk bands of the second wave, they are best known for the track “So What,” which people found so horrible and shocking, they tried to have it banned. Metallica covered it in the ‘90s and made it a classic; they even performed it live on some MTV European awards show in 1998 and it was great. This film covers the band members’ less than upright childhoods before convening together because they found something in punk rock that they were…
Read More

Stiv: No Regrets, No Compromise

Well, if this isn’t one of the more interesting rock docs I’ve seen lately. Stiv Bators, frontman for the Dead Boys and Lords Of The New Church, was one of the more charismatic musicians of the initial punk era before becoming a goth wannabe doing covers of Madonna songs. With this film, more focus is placed on Stiv as a person more than Stiv as a singer. Unable to fully license Dead Boys and Lords music, the film has to find another angle to make things interesting. And for the most part, it works. Drawing on interviews with Jimmy Zero…
Read More

Will Everything Really Be Alright In The End?

What can be said about Weezer that hasn’t already been said in the now classic SNL skit from late 2018? Some people are ride or die for Weezer, and others like me jumped ship years ago. With their transition into a full-on pop band in the vein of Panic! At The Disco or Fun now complete, the band doesn’t even resemble the once bright new things in the ‘90s they started out as. Some people might say that’s snobbish, but we are here to dissemble why the band went in the completely opposite direction that gave us an unnecessary hit…
Read More

Derek Trucks: The Daily Vault Interview

Legend has it that Derek Trucks bought his first guitar for five dollars at a yard sale when he was nine years old. Struggling to get his small hands to form chords on a full-size guitar neck led him to learn using a slide. A genuine child prodigy, Trucks had his first paying gig at 11, and by the time he was 13 had played alongside no less than Buddy Guy. By age 15 he had started his own group, the Derek Trucks Band, and had begun sitting in with his uncle’s band—his uncle being Butch Trucks, longtime drummer for…
Read More

Nick Cave: One More Time With Feeling

While making their most recent album, Skeleton Tree, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds were filming the proceedings and making what they imagined as a little "making of" documentary to go on some sort of special edition DVD. But then Nick’s son Arthur fell to his death. Suddenly, nothing made much sense. After taking some mourning time, Nick and the band returned to the studio to finish up the record. Everything they’d done now took on a black pall that was inescapable. What we get are some interviews with Nick Cave, his wife, and band member Warren Ellis talking about…
Read More

Small Victories: The True Story Of Faith No More

As anyone who has read this site since I joined almost five years ago, Faith No More is my be-all end all band of all time. There have been at least two books in the last 25 years that chronicled the band, but Adrian Harte’s chronicle, complete with new interviews with everyone in the band’s history (minus Jim Martin and Mike Patton) is as definitive a piece as you’ll ever get. With almost minute detail about the band’s early years all the way through their breakthrough with “Epic” and The Real Thing, fans and non-fans will find themselves ecstatic about…
Read More

Turn It Around: The Story Of East Bay Punk

This is a documentary executive produced by the members of Green Day, narrated by Iggy Pop, chronicling the scene in which Green Day, Rancid, and others came up in. Sounds like an amazing journey. Well, you’d be about half right. While this film is somewhat definitive and tells the story in only a way that punk rockers could tell, it feels like a hefty hardback book. At over two-and a-half hours, it pushes the patience of even the most diehard Green Day or punk follower. But it does get a number of things right while going in circles to do…
Read More

2018: Pete’s Best Of

This year was interesting. Not only did I undergo many personal challenges, I found a lack of great and amazing music that really blew my mind. Maybe it’s the lack of anything new and exciting and because rock and roll is no longer what it used to be. Whatever the reason, what follows is an unranked list of the best of what’s around from this year. Mudhoney – Digital GarbageThis was the best album of the year regardless of what others say. The grunge stalwarts came back after five years off the racks and went political, and guess what? They…
Read More