July 20 is a day many longtime Bruce Springsteen fans would like to forget. That morning, as the first six shows for The Boss’ 2023 North American tour went on sale through Ticketmaster, devotees were shocked to find most seats gone within seconds, and instead only “platinum” or dynamically priced tickets available for purchase — […]
Marcus King is all of 26 years old, but he plays rock’n’roll as if he was genetically engineered in a laboratory from bits of Duane Allman, Jimmy Page, Billy Gibbons and Stevie Ray Vaughan. King’s music feels timeless, especially when he’s laying waste to concert stages with his longtime mates in the Marcus King Band. […]
It was December 1991, in Santa Fe when I ran into Arthur Spivak. I had been living in L.A. since ‘85 and met Arthur at the Sunset Marquis when I met Steven Van Zandt to go over a photo shoot. Arthur was managing Steven at that time and Arthur knew I was working as a […]
“So you got an AR!” says a gunned-up colleague named Curtis. We’re care-workers doing a morning shift in a supported-living facility, and my news puts a spring in his step. “Congratulations,” Curtis says. “Matt, you are becoming American. Gotta assault rifle; all you gotta do now is get fat.” “Cheers, mate,” I say, wiping down […]
Alexander Chee’s blurb on the back of Isaac Fitzgerald’s recently published bestselling memoir, Dirtbag, Massachusetts, reads: “He’s a ringleader for the circus in the House of Love.” And after reading this book, I think most people would agree that Isaac Fitzgerald is certainly at least that, and then some. Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a memoir-in-essays about […]
This week marks the 53rd anniversary of Woodstock — the music and art fair of 1969, originally announced as “An Aquarian Exposition,” which took place at Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York, after promoters couldn’t find a festival location in the town of Woodstock itself, a well-known haven for musicians at the […]
“I love New York,” Julia Michaels tells me, only a few minutes into our interview, from her Los Angeles home. Straight off, the singer and songwriter, who will turn 29 this year, is a lesson in dichotomies. She loves New York because it “feels communal,” in stark contrast to the place that Dorothy Parker once […]
Name Dan Reynolds Best known for I’d like to be best known for being the dad to four really rad kids. I have four wonderful children that I love. I have a nine-year-old girl who has been all around the world with me, right at the beginning of the onslaught of Imagine Dragons, and has […]
“We had to create our own scene because there wasn’t one in Buffalo at the time that was that welcoming…” Goo Goo Dolls frontman John Rzeznik tells me, of the early days, long before they became a household name. Goo Goo Dolls began as an unpretentious, late-80s punk band who had a hard time fitting […]
San Francisco, 1994 A group of dykes, feminists, queer punks, and onlookers crowded an unassuming martini bar as Lynn Breedlove and a few friends used a chainsaw, blood, and parts of a pig’s body from a Mission District butcher shop to protest sexual assault, police, and art-bro bullshit. “It was gnarly,” Breedlove remembers, noting that […]