If the mission of ’77 punk was the resuscitation of rock & roll’s antisocial roots, postpunk amounted to an unfettered exploration of the musical and cultural spaces that punk had made possible. In England’s Dreaming, Jon Savage noted that as early as 1978, punk had fractured into two camps: The social realists on one side (The Clash, Stiff Little Fingers) whose fans would become the street punk, Oi!, and hardcore movements. (More…)
“I started off rapping for people just like myself, people who were in awe of wealth and flash. It was a conversation between me and them. But now most of those who buy my records are listening in on others’ conversation. They are the aural equivalent of voyeurs, thrilled at this crazy world that has nothing to do with their experience.” -Ice-T (More…)
Burnt Cross are a pretty new band in the punk scheme of things. But you wouldn’t know this from hearing them. In fact, the four year-old duo’s songs often evoke the “instant classic” quality you immediately recognize in songs like Crass’s Banned From the Roxy, Conflict’s mid-eighties rants, and the perennial “some-band-you-know-from-the-
Tom Waits’ new album, Bad As Me takes a swig and passes the bottle to the characters he’s hollered at and grumbled about for nearly forty years. We have: black sheep that families pay to never come home, the time-battered woman sitting at the bar after closing time, SRO hermits, and escapists who chase their fantasies on the highway until their rusted wheels fall off. (More…)
I’ve loved reggae and dub more than any other musics since first raiding my Parisian cousin’s tapes at the age of 14. What I found in his banlieue bedroom spiritualized me, politicized me, and made me a lifelong fan of adventurous and committed sounds. My love has never waned in the slightest. If anything, it pounds louder and more insistently in my world now, than ever before. (More…)
Manuel Noriega didn’t like Guns and Roses. At least that’s what the US military counted on, when it employed extremely loud music, to help flush the former dictator out of hiding. The best-known example of using sound for military purposes, when it comes to psychological warfare, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. (More…)
He might as well have been a hip hop star. Not just any, but the kind once revered for dispensing with ‘conscious‘ knowledge, like Public Enemy. Who would have ever consigned such a fate to a 94 year-old French Holocaust survivor, the title of whose best-selling book graces this mural, together with an image of the author. (More…)
Joy and rage, as each new generation bangs up against its own possibilities and the world as it is, are what gives rock music its energy and power. This is why first albums are rarely surpassed, why corporate pop is such a betrayal, and why listening to Sir Michael Philip Jagger failing to get satisfaction aged 65 is less authentic than it was in 1965. (More…)
It’s been nearly 20 years since the Kopyright Liberation Front (KLF) committed suicide, twice. One incident involved a gun; the other had a furnace. The pioneering group was at the top of their game. They had international hits. They made money. They wrote the book on ambient-techno in their 1990 masterpiece, Chill Out. And they imbued the notion of “trance techno” into British pop with their single, What Time is Love? (More…)
To wear armor at all is to need protection, to fear wounds beyond what the body can sustain. So when that armor begins to fail, the resulting vulnerability is so much worse than an unguarded safety. On his sixth album under the Crooked Fingers name, Eric Bachmann takes a songwriting trip into a state of such startling vulnerability that it’s hard to count all the wounds contained in its 11 songs. (More…)
The grown ups weren’t happy. Following violent protests against university fee hikes in London last year, a screed against the musical tastes of the demonstrators was circulated on a number of prominent discussion lists. Not only was the music played at the demos unchallenging. There wasn’t that much of it either. What had happened to today’s youth? Were their iPods suddenly empty? (More…)
You’d be forgiven for believing that Pavarotti is Italy’s only musician. Sadly, the late opera singer is the only artist to achieve household name status outside the country since the 1970s. Press any further, and even amongst the cognoscenti, their knowledge will be limited to film composers such as Ennio Morricone. Or, on a good day, Italo Disco. Once popular punk bands, like Raw Power? Few will recognize them. (More…)