As the world looks on to see if Afghanistan is going to evolve or devolve, so far it’s not looking great, at all. Especially for girls. Under the new Taliban rule, in the past month boys were allowed to go back to school and girls from grade six and up were not. In a spirit […]
When COVID-19 hit the United States in early 2020, it caused an unprecedented shutdown of the live music industry that continued long after most other sectors of the economy had reopened. As the vaccine rollout gained steam over the first half of 2021, and new cases and hospitalizations trended downward, music lovers began to feel […]
Waiting sucks. It makes kids go ballistic, it frenzies animals, plants probably aren’t into it, and without the rare ability to experience satisfaction just by anticipating it, you too probably think waiting blows. One of the worst waits is a call center telephone hold: a customer service line, a federal government office, the damn phone […]
“There’s the thing with the Chili Peppers: We put socks on our dicks, and we’re never going to outrun it,” Flea told GQ in 2019. “People are always going to think of that. I feel that ultimately the measure of art that we or I created, as good as it is, over time will stand […]
I walked into Rhino Records in New Paltz, New York on September 24, 1991, with one mission in mind: copping the new cassette by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. After months of reading about the band working on the follow-up to their 1989 breakthrough LP Mother’s Milk with Rick Rubin, the time was finally nigh. […]
The world changed 30 years ago today. Though it took a few months before the proverbial train left the station, the rumblings from the underground completely blew up when college rock and punk blended to form alternative rock, with Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl serving as the conductors. Nevermind’s legacy is firmly and […]
September saw two high-profile metal releases from Iron Maiden and Carcass, plus a reissue of Metallica’s “Black Album,” one of the best-selling metal records in history, complete with a tribute so ill-conceived it’ll make you want to invest in oil companies to hasten our demise. But Blast Rites is more about legends in the making, […]
Of the many guest spots on Willow Smith’s punk album, Lately I Feel Everything, one stands out: Avril Lavigne on “Grow,” which evokes the bold 2000s pop-punk the latter became known for. “I wanted ‘Grow’ to sound like it was on Radio Disney in 2007,” Smith told W Magazine. “So I hit up Avril Lavigne; […]
For the last decade at least, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have been touted multiple times as hot, emerging technologies on the cusp of going mainstream. They were supposed to become part of our everyday lives and a staple of our entertainment consumption. Except somehow they never did cross that magical threshold to […]
If the first half of the ‘90s were alt-rock’s boom years — when formerly unknown bands were turning into multi-platinum sensations every few months — then 1996 marked the beginning of its flop era. Weezer’s Pinkerton, though now remembered as a career-defining classic, sold so poorly compared to the band’s triple-platinum 1994 debut that Rivers […]