The Afghan Whigs are better now than they’ve ever been. The last decade of the band’s output, 2014’s Do to the Beast and there years later, In Spades, and, now, How Do You Burn?, reflect a streak unmatched by any other period in their storied, 35-year career. Like The Empire Strikes Back, The Afghan Whigs […]
“I used to play high school basketball,” Perry Farrell says, serving as a message and warning statement, but not in the Al Bundy sense. Standing in the Lollapalooza press area mid-Friday afternoon, the Jane’s Addiction/Porno for Pyros singer (and Lollapalooza co-founder) has his eyes on one thing: a basketball version of Connect 4. His warning […]
At the old Mayan Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, fans are wound up for a smoldering night of jagged, turbocharged punk and deep blues. The Kills have come to reignite the present and reflect on their past amid the room’s angular, pre-Columbian temple decor and packed dance floor. At stage left is singer Alison Mosshart, […]
When Everclear‘s Art Alexakis logs onto Zoom, you can’t help but notice that he’s seated casually in front of a wall of platinum records. “You know, it’s funny, I’ve had them for years and before I got this studio I’d never put them on the walls,” he says. The studio is a space he shares […]
Mike Leonard, the singer/songwriter/guitarist of the Bleeding Hearts still remembers one of the last times he saw Bob Stinson, the late, great founding guitarist of the Replacements and for a short stint, Leonard’s bandmate in the Bleeding Hearts and roommate. “He was sitting by Lake of the Isles [in Minneapolis],” Leonard recalls in a recent […]
Three decades ago, The Boo Radleys made a psychedelic masterpiece that was hailed by NME as one of the top albums of 1993. Their next album spawned a sunny Britpop hit and rose to No. 1 on the U.K. album charts, and the next one was rumored to have influenced Radiohead. So why is the […]
It may sound hyperbolic, but without Jack Irons, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam may never have come to exist. The 59-year-old drummer was key to the formation of both of those Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted bands, thanks to lifelong friendships with musicians such as Flea, Anthony Kiedis and Alain Johannes, […]
Flush with the success of Pearl Jam’s 1991 debut Ten, the band’s co-founder and guitarist Stone Gossard could have easily spent his hard-earned cash on any number of creature comforts. Instead, he teamed with longtime Seattle rock scene cohort Regan Hagar and in 1994 started Loosegroove Records as an imprint through Sony. Gossard utilized his […]
For some recording artists, the pandemic and pop music made two strangely productive bedfellows. Especially, of course, for any composer with a deep misanthropic streak, like Mark Oliver Everett, aka E, the frontman for the quirk-rocking, lower-case eels. He’s no stranger to tragedy, like the early death of his renowned physicist father, Hugh Everett III, […]
Producer Brendan O’Brien was fresh off wrapping work on Pearl Jam’s sophomore album Vs. when he met Chris Cornell for the first time in the summer of 1993. Cornell and his bandmates in Soundgarden were nearly finished recording what would become their smash album Superunknown, and, per a recommendation from Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard, […]