Looking back at 1982 in music, the headline is obvious: Thriller Sells A Bajillion Copies, Becomes World’s Biggest Album. But is it the year’s best album? Funny enough, Michael Jackson‘s sixth LP hardly even affected the charts that year — it snuck out in late November, just as Men at Work’s 1981 blockbuster, Business as […]
The powers-that-be did their best to prevent this year’s Major League Baseball season from happening, but, alas, we’re back. By we, I mean the annual SPIN baseball preview. As usual, everyone (or almost everyone) is optimistic about their team’s chances in 2022. In 2021, a good chunk of the season was played with minimal fans […]
Dave Grohl‘s daughter Violet came full circle last night when she performed “Nausea” onstage with X during their long-awaited show at the Greek Theater to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Los Angeles. Earlier this year, Dave and Violet released a recorded cover of the song that they ended up performing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! with Nirvana bassist Krist […]
Somehow, some way, it’s baseball season again. Yes, already. Last year’s abbreviated run saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Tampa Bay Rays in six games to win their first World Series title in 32 years, something that Ben Gibbard predicted in our 2020 preview. As you can imagine, Dodgers fans — especially the ones […]
In a year of chaos, one of the best things that happened was when L.A. punk veterans X surprise-released a new album with their original members. Alphabetland was the ripping album we needed in the early pandemic days and thankfully, a few new tunes from those sessions have emerged. On Tuesday morning, X revealed B-sides “True Love, […]
X are celebrating their 43-year career in their new video for “I Gotta Fever,” off their latest album Alphabetland. It’s the L.A. band’s first studio release in 27 years and the first with their original line-up in the past 35 years. To make the video as special as the album, the quartet enlisted the help of their fans […]
Rock is obvs not dead but it’s not hard to see why people always say it is, almost wishfully. For decades, the most commercially viable (and even critically bolstered) rock was dominated by white dudes, which is troublesome considering how many of its pioneers, including the dearly departed, radically queer genius Little Richard, were not. […]
Against all odds and the advice of many virologists, the 2020 MLB season is finally underway. Whether that’s a good idea in the midst of a pandemic is beside the point because it’s happening. Baseball is back, albeit in a much stranger fashion than anyone could have imagined when spring training began in February (which […]
On one hand, who can think about stuff as trivial as this? On the other, what else is there to do? If art was made to fill a cultural vacuum, well… now’s the fucking time, buddy. Hopefully, you’ve been binging every show, reading every book, repainting every bathroom you’ve been putting off. Hopefully, when (and […]