Label: MVD Released: July 8, 2008 Most documentaries are just visual histories of a band or a scene. The trouble is that they take a scientific approach with a hypothesis that they attempt to prove over the course of the film. But punk is a human story and one that, at its best, has dictated its own future. Punk’s Not… Read more »
Label: Smithsonian Folkways Released: July 29, 2008 I was scared when I was first asked to review Richmond Blues. Most of what I’ve heard from Smithsonian Folkways has been extraordinary, but most of the music I’ve discovered on their label is classic stuff that’s passed the test of time. It’s hard to go wrong with Lead Belly or Paul Robeson… Read more »
Label: Secretly Canadian Released: June 17, 2008 Just because an artist has done all that can be expected of him and has earned the right to rest on his laurels, doesn’t mean the work he started is done. So it is with Bob Dylan and The War on Drugs has picked up the cause and put their own spin on… Read more »
Label: Icon Records Released: August 5, 2008 There are great albums that are definitive in their genre, essential to their scene or even influential across the full spectrum of rock music. Then, there are (possibly) great albums cultivated on ground made fertile by their more innovative predecessors. Can they really be called great? Who’s to say for sure, but there… Read more »
Label: self-released Released: August 1, 2008 Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so the physicists say. You cannot effectively defend your position without understanding the opposition, so the orators say. You cannot know up without down, dark without light, good without evil, so the philosophers say. Ours is in many ways a world defined and understood in terms… Read more »
Label: Azra Records Released: September 11, 2007 I’ll make no secret that songs of hopelessness and despair that have no sense of redemption or salvation have an uphill battle to resonate with me. That’s not to say that none do, just that it’s harder for them, because they run against the grain of my soul. Mad Juana’s Acoustic Voodoo is… Read more »
Label: Acerbic Noise Development Released: January 29, 2008 When an album runs wild, there’s not usually a whole lot of middle ground. It’s either on the verge of brilliance or on the verge of disaster. The Devil and the Sea are certainly wild. Like Black Flag before them, they take the spirit of free jazz (call it free punk, if… Read more »
Label: Virgin Released: July 22, 2008 This set has long been known to Bowie fans, because of its quality and accessibility (it was broadcast on LA’s now-defunct KMET after all). But there’s more to it than just that. The show finds Bowie on his first US tour, completely immersed in his new Ziggy Stardust persona and at the first of… Read more »
Label: Jericho Beach Released: July 29, 2008 When I was 16, my parents took me on a trip out West. On that trip, we spent three days at the Grand Canyon. Oddly enough, it wasn’t the most striking thing I saw on that trip, not because it wasn’t amazing, but because it was just too much to take in at… Read more »
Label: MVD Entertainment Group Released: June 10, 2008 Recorded 24 years ago in England, The Nottingham Tapes finds Hanoi Rocks at the time of their major label debut, but don’t expect any of that Bob Ezrin slickness to be a part of this live show. This is more along the lines of a home video. When the lights go down,… Read more »