Culture doesn’t evolve all at once. Nirvana released Nevermind in September of 1991, but Guns ‘N Roses’ Use Your Illusion II came out the very next month and knocked it down the charts. The arrival of grunge supposedly signified that leather was out and flannel was in, but leather wasn’t going anywhere. Nevermind popped up […]
Lots of kids pick up a musical instrument because they heard John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, or Stevie Ray Vaughn and thought, “That’s cool. I want to do that.” Those kids must’ve also seen the “Be Like Mike” Gatorade commercials and figured they could be like Michael Jordan. I knew the only thing I had […]
Wagner requested I write about Pink Floyd this week. If you want me to write about a band or an album, let me know, and we’ll see if I have anything interesting to say. Mount Everest’s Nepal base camp sits at 17,598 feet above sea level. That’s over 3,000 feet higher than any peak […]
Sometimes I get jealous of bands like FACS. They know what they do, they do it well, and they don’t fuck around too much. And when they do fuck around, it’s within a framework that ensures they’ll never not sound like themselves. All their songs are powered by the bass guitar, amble at about 120 […]
There’s a scene in I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: a Film About Wilco, the 2002 documentary about the making of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot that lives rent free in my head. Wilco’s singer/songwriter Jeff Tweedy and multi-instrumentalist/detail wizard Jay Bennett are sitting behind a studio console working on the mix for an album […]
To me one of the most relatable moments in A Complete Unknown, James Mangold’s new (surprisingly good) Bob Dylan biopic, is a conversion between two characters that would’ve been known then, and are known now, as hipsters. In the tight corner of a cluttered walkup, two twenty-somethings classify musicians as either “folk” or “country.” Presumably, […]
Writing music can be a challenge. Sometimes figuring how to join one section to another can feel like digging through a giant tub of Legos to find the perfect rare piece. However, it rarely feels like the WORK of writing lyrics. More than any other single element of music, lyrics determine a song’s individuality. […]
This week’s Heck Record of the Week comes courtesy of author/musician/Youtuber Brady Snow. The 1970s is the best decade for rock music. There are a dozen reasons why – I could, and maybe will write thousands of words on it – but today we’re going to focus on one: globalization. If there’s any […]
“Why are guys so into LCD Soundsystem?” my friend, the musician/DJ Bonnie Jeanne asked me the other day. Normally, I would take this comment as something more biting than it probably reads on the page, something more like: “Why do guys like this basic bitch band that isn’t nearly as good as these 15 other […]
Forgive me, ahem, a dollop of civic pride: right now Denver has the best basketball player in Nikola Jokić and the best death metal band in Blood Incantation. (Sorry Tomb Mold, you’re Giannis). That’s pretty good for the 19th most populous city in the US. What’s wild is that I don’t even know if […]