With just 30 days until Boise’s Treefort Music Fest kicks off — and shortly before the Bad Penny rolls out an exciting interview series surrounding it — here’s a look back in photos (and some words) at 2019’s installment.
(Originally published by Music Connection.)
… And here’s my review of the Touch and Go Records’ three-day anniversary concert from September 2006.
CHICAGO — Touch and Go’s three-day anniversary bash wasn’t just a lesson in the history of the seminal record label. It was a Cliff’s Notes-like recap of the last 25 years of indie rock itself.
Underground granddaddies Big Black, Scratch Acid and Killdozer spit forth a lethal dose of abrasive, confrontational brutality, while !!!, Ted Leo and Enon courted the crowd with dance-rock appeal. And therein lied the clear distinction between the challenging approach taken by yesterday’s bands and the sheer accessibility of their successors.
Continue reading
Now here’s a blast from the past. A blast from the past from the past, actually.
Touch and Go Records 4 eva.
Before Fall Out Boy, before the Academy Is … — hell, even before the Smashing Pumpkins — there was Touch and Go Records. Like those bands, the trailblazing record label’s reach has extended far beyond its Chicago base of operations, but come September, it’ll be enshrining its 25 years of influence with a massive anniversary gala designed to dazzle indie rock’s shrewdest scholars.
Scratch Acid, Big Black, Man … or Astro-man?, Killdozer — while they’re not exactly household names, the underground goons that shattered eardrums and tore punk rock a new one decades ago will be wreaking havoc once again in commemoration of the label that sustained them. Think of it as “A Mighty Wind” for the indie-rock masses.
Continue readingDug up this October 2015 article for Music Connection in which I reviewed Lucy & La Mer playing at — of all places — a vegan beer and food festival in Los Angeles. Click on the photo or title below, and you’ll be directed to Music Connection, which houses the entire review. The group’s most recent release was “Don’t It Feel Good,” a single issued in June.
Metallica, the biggest metal band ever; and Mastodon, one of the best metal bands of this century, share a lot in common.
For starters, Mastodon started publicly crediting Metallica as major influence shortly after the Atlanta crew became a band in 2000. Six years later, Mastodon covered Metallica’s instrumental classic “Orion” for a tribute album tied to the 20th anniversary celebration of Metallica’s Master of Puppets.
James, Lars and the gang returned the favor a couple of years after that. The thrash gods gave the Atlanta sludge-rockers a huge break by crowning them as the openers for two of Metallica’s European tours. For good measure, 2009’s Guitar Hero: Metallica featured Mastodon’s “Blood and Thunder” as one of its playable tracks.
But the common bonds don’t stop there. There’s a truly uncanny coincidence in two songs by the metal bands, both of which deserve to sit on the Iron Throne. The numbers will be familiar to fans: “Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” from Metallica’s best (or second-best) record, 1986’s Master of Puppets; and “Megalodon,” a gem of a track from Mastodon’s breakthrough record, 2004’s Leviathan.
Continue readingAfter recent conversations with Dark Tranquillity and At the Gates (soon to be published), I had the pleasure of speaking with the other band comprising Gothenburg, Sweden’s “Big Three”: In Flames. Guitarist Björn Gelotte — who joined the band in 1995, shortly after its inception — talked at length about the recently released Foregone (In Flames LP #14). Check out the piece on New Noise; a full transcript of our conversation is forthcoming.
If you’re a fan of Totimoshi, desert rock, Tool, alt-rock, Queens of the Stone Age, Fatso Jetson, Alain Johannes, the Jesus Lizard or indie rock in general, you need to familiarize yourself with All Souls. My wide-ranging conversation with frontman and all-around-good-guy Antonio Aguilar is up on New Noise‘s website. Don’t miss it.
Make the determination yourself by checking out my epic, sprawling conversation with the New York black-metal band’s frontman. Published earlier this week on New Noise‘s website, Paul Delaney reveals why he almost had to step away from making music altogether, the most important person in his life and why he still enjoys living it — even if “the prognosis is quite negative” on Black Anvil’s latest album.
Yuvees frontman Brendon Broome began developing a taste for great music before he was even born.
By way of explanation, his mom attended one of Nirvana’s final shows while she was pregnant with him.
“I was in utero for the In Utero tour,” he cracked to the Bad Penny earlier this week.
Continue reading
One of the greatest American composers of all time, Burt Bacharach passed away earlier today at at 94. In celebration of him — and his long, unparalleled life — I unearthed my previously unpublished full interview with the beloved Bacharach on November 14, 2003.
Our conversation took place eight days after my mother and I saw him and Ron Isley perform their collaborative album, Here I Am, with a full orchestra at the Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills, California. Tears gushed copiously onstage and in the crowd as Isley and Bacharach delivered one of the most touching concert performances of that — or any other — year.
Continue reading
The Bad Penny (beta) 