by Brett Warner
Every other Friday night, T.J. Byrnes Restaurant and Bar in Manhattan’s Financial District hosts a modestly produced karaoke night. The small, unassuming Irish pub is tucked away behind a towering housing project, and on any such night, nearby residents might hear the echoes of drunken laughter or the faint opening bass notes of The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me.” For Rutgers professor Fred Solinger and bookstore manager George Carmona, though, this is not just about getting plastered and mumbling through a semi-coherent rendition of “Copacabana”— it’s turf warfare.
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by Brett Warner
It’s 9:33 PM at the Detroiter Truck Stop in Woodhaven, Michigan and I’m inadvertently playing Duran Duran for the black metal band Goatwhore. Standing bored behind the gift shop checkout counter half an hour before closing time, I had plugged my iPod into the small external laptop speaker display model sitting quietly to my right, humming along to the first couple tunes on 1993’s The Wedding Album. Halfway through Warren Cuccurullo’s guitar solo on “Ordinary World”, I look up to see four very big, very pierced and very tattooed gentlemen standing directly across from me, waiting to purchase a few pairs of winter gloves. Recognizing their spooky font logo, I proclaim in the manliest voice I can muster how my old roommate was a big time fan. It’s too late, though – my metal cred is gone forever. I’ve been outed.
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by Brett Warner
It has always been a bitter irony that death is the most commercially viable thing an artist can ever do. From Vermeer to Van Gogh, Nick Drake to Notorious B.I.G., nothing attracts dollar signs and revisionist cultural significance quite like a tragic demise. Despite what the gargantuan pharmaceutical industry might suggest, people are secretly enthralled by the romance of death – it’s why The Dark Knight made more than a billion dollars, it’s why Nevermind, not OK Computer, is the most important record of the ‘90s, and it’s why Sony Music’s new release Michael (in stores now) will sell a shit ton of copies despite not being a real Michael Jackson album in just about every possible way.
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by Tamara Palmer
“Rockers are pussies.”
– Al Jourgensen
He’s been variously known under monikers such as Buck Satan, Alien Dog Star and Alien Jourgensen and is the brain trust behind such thought-provoking band names as Ministry, Revolting Cocks and 1000 Homo DJs. But Al Jourgensen, who cut a frightening figure with these bands’ even more provocative industrial music when they emerged in the late eighties and early nineties, is a surprisingly friendly and relatable guy. Once the picture of cocaine and heroin rock star excess, the six-years sober Jourgensen is far more likely to be found at the opera than at an arena concert these days.
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by Jay Hathaway
“It’s volatile.”
– Maynard James Keenan
Maynard James Keenan thrives on the unpredictable. He’s famous as the lead singer of two hugely successful, yet almost completely different bands: Tool and A Perfect Circle. His current band, Puscifer, released its first album, “V” Is For Vagina, in 2007, and followed it up with a remix album in 2008.
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by Tamara Palmer
“Onward and upward.”
– Brody Dalle
While fans of the Distillers and other next-generation punk bands should ultimately find this transition natural and easy to follow, Spinnerette — the new vehicle for former Distillers lead Brody Dalle — has a decidedly more gentle rock edge as debuted on their first release, the “Ghetto Love EP.”
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by Blogbot
This Sunday (Dec 5th) hooktastic London duo Graffiti6 (a.k.a. TommyD and Jamie Scott) will be SG Radio’s special in-studio guests. We’ll also have longtime friend of SG, Andrew W.K., calling in with his latest protégé, the intriguing Aleister X.
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