In 1991, I was living in a one-man bachelor pad in Cricklewood, London. I was a staff writer for the U.K. music paper Melody Maker. During any given week, I would either be drunk in America, drunk on a plane to America or writing up my experiences, drunk in America.
I'd been at Melody Maker for a couple of years, and already had one notable story to my credit. It was my two-part cover article on… more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five… more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five… more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five… more »
Of all rock's family tendrils, rockabilly is the one that keeps re-boppin', sporting a revival every decade or so, its coming-of-age kicks allowing each new offspring to roll its own. Guitar-heavy, emphasizing Wild Ones rebellion ("whaddya got?") and sonic dazzle (heavy on the reverb and chest vibrato), it raves and paves garage-punk (The Seeds to Damned), shockabilly (The Cramps and Chadbourne), new-wave (Stray Cats and Dire Straits), waggle-wobble (Jon Spencer and Boss Hog), Nirvana and… more »
In the mid-'80s a slew of quirky college-rock bands from Georgia and North Carolina stood poised to become the next big thing on the American indie-rock scene. Most wound up as footnotes to the R.E.M. story. Some — like Charlotte, North Carolina's Fetchin Bones — had brief moments in the sun before getting lost in the Aquanet fog of late-eighties hair metal. By the time Nirvana arrived a few years later to claim a spot… more »