Now this is quite the honor: Mike Watt, one of the most respected musicians ever to lurk in the underground, has anted up – all jazz-style – for the second installment in the Bad Penny’s brand-new series, Revising History. Continue reading
With Cave In’s new EP, Planets of Old, seeing a proper release – with a bonus DVD – on January 26, here’s a vintage interview with the guys when they had Antenna on the brain. Continue reading
“It’s difficult to foresee anything other than a huge calamity in the industry itself,” David Bowie predicted to me in 2003. “And, as I’ve believed for a long time now, live shows will come to dominate in a new kind of way again.” Continue reading
David Bowie gets the White Stripes, the Raveonettes and the Dandy Warhols – but not Yeah Yeah Yeahs. And were it not for him, he says, Lou Reed and John Cale’s immortal band might never have made it. Continue reading
Eleven years ago, I studied for five months in Santiago, Chile. As part of my education regiment, I chose a class on the history of rock and roll. You might think that’s as much as a cop-out as taking a class in bowling or frisbee golf. But as someone who had mostly shunned classic rock till that point, I actually learned a lot. My teacher was obsessed with Deep Purple and Cream, and explained to us how Ozzy Osbourne was rock’s first psicótico.
I like to think I returned him the favor by teaching him a bit about Nirvana, of whom he wasn’t much aware, in my final paper. The self-generated topic: How Nirvana ushered indie-rock, rougher production values and anti-corporate attitudes into the mainstream with In Utero. El profesor told me I worked harder than any of his Chilean students in the class, and that I nailed the exam (70 out of 70), too.
These days, my Spanish is a bit rusty, so I couldn’t tell you what most of the paper means. But here it is for your archival viewing pleasure. PDFs are included in case the images are too taxing on yer eyes:
