Music, movies, comics, design, interviews and reviews
Norman Blake, Raymond McGinley, and Gerard (Gerry) Love are Teenage Fanclub, which may be the most underrated band of all time (even more so than Big Star, a band to which they are inevitably compared). Prophesied by critics as the Next Big Thing in 1991 (and we all know what became the Big Thing that [...]
One. The nicest one of the circle will get stabbed on the Metro bus on 3rd and Madison in “normal” daylight hours. The one not known to argue, who gets killed in an argument. He’s the one with the tobacco-and-food-flecked beard crowd you’d ride the elevator with who could carry on a polite conversation, and [...]
You know him. Joe Carducci is the guy at your crummy job who’s been there for ten years longer than anyone else, and no one knows why he stays. He sits in the corner at lunchtime with a really big book while the other employees fraternize. But they don’t dare pick on him, or even [...]
All people are born with a creative potential and that society must guarantee that every person has the opportunity to develop and express that potential … Art should be related to the interest, needs, and aspirations of the people. —What We Want, What We Believe Black Panther Party Platform, October 1966 WELCOME TO THE TERRORDOME [...]
As the band’s landmark case in early 2000 against Napster was beginning to gather steam in the media, Metallica’s lawyer Howard King was quoted saying, “If Metallica wins, Napster is out of business, so there’s no one else to sue.” 1 In a predictable chain of technological advancements, several companies came forward with new and [...]
A Pink Floyd style break-in, like in the middle of a deceptively quieter track on The Wall. A mesmerizing three note riff played over a driving mid-tempo anthem…?!? This is Starflyer 59? The moody noise pop band that the guitar player from System of a Down obsessively digs to find his Zen? The band that [...]
SEATTLE It’s 2004. I haven’t been back to the Midwest in three years. Since I saw David Bazan in Austin, he has done a lot of tours and risen and fallen in fame around Seattle and nationwide a couple times over. Two years after the subculturally sensational Control, Bazan has forsaken the concept album and [...]
“I feel this album is a natural progression of what we would have made if Frodus hadn’t broken up,” singer/guitarist Shelby Cinca claims of his new band Decahedron’s debut, Disconnection Imminent. Those are strong words, considering everything Cinca’s previous Washington D.C.-based “spazzcore” band accomplished, insanely gnarly and punchy sound through two brilliant studio collections of [...]
A good friend of mine was happily married to another good friend of mine,” explains Zeke Rudick, who runs the up-and-coming label Meaningless Records. “He was obsessed with the Cure and she wasn’t. She was getting pretty tired of him blowing mortgage money on B-sides and Japanese imports after awhile, so she gave him the [...]
SYNCHRONIZED I’m fortunate enough to have insurance now,” Tim Parker mused during our conversation in January. “It helped a lot in terms of the pockets and getting into a hospital and whatnot, and not having to go through all of the bullshit.” In 2003, Parker—who is better known as the Gift of Gab, Blackalicious emcee—began [...]
