by Brett Warner
Love him or hate him, Kanye West is America’s favorite asshole. His endlessly hyped new album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy hits stores next week, though little of that hype concerns the music itself. Whether apologizing to George W. Bush, rambling on Twitter, canceling appearances, or claiming that Coldplay are bigger than The Beatles, Kanye seems dead set on further alienating his “haters” and keeping his fans in perpetually defensive mode. In spite of – or perhaps, because of – his talents, Kanye is a uniquely positioned pop culture scapegoat. Too self involved and misinformed to realize how he sounds to the rest of us, Mr. West has a knack for stealing the spotlight from other obnoxious, egotistical celebrity artists – of which there are plenty.
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by Jay Hathaway
“I had been in a sexually hibernated state of mind…”
– Kevin Barnes
Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes has been experimenting with pop music for almost 20 years, all the way back to recording home demos in high school. He started of Montreal in 1997 in Athens, GA, and fell in with the Elephant 6 collective, which included bands like Elf Power, Neutral Milk Hotel, and The Apples in Stereo. Since then, of Montreal has put out nine records, including Barnes’ biggest critical success, 2007’s Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
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by Andrea Larrabee
“I’d kill some zombies.”
– Craig Mabbitt
It’s 4 o’ clock in the afternoon, and I’m in the dancers’ dressing room at Crazy Girls, a strip club on the corner of La Brea and Sunset in Hollywood, waiting to meet Craig Mabbitt and Max Green from the post-hardcore band Escape The Fate. Their third album has just been released the previous day, and the boys are scheduled to perform a special mini-set for a select group of guests invited to a record release party hosted by their new label, Interscope, at the intimate venue later on in the evening.
Cracked mirrors and a ’70s style red formica laminate counter run around three walls, the fourth being taken up mostly by a bank of sticker-adorned lockers. The carpet has seen better days, the lighting is harsh, and the room is otherwise sparsely furnished with a few cheap chairs and an exceptionally wobbly table. Ink jet printed signs are taped up in several places to remind the girls who usually occupy this space that the $25 house fee must be paid before they start their shift. In short, in the cold light of day, the circumstances are seedy rather than sexy – though that would change later on in the evening as the club came alive to the epic, hormone-charged sounds of Escape The Fate’s grind-friendly release.
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by Brad Warner
“John Lennon’s alcohol stinking spittle in my face…”
– Mark Mothersbaugh
There was a peculiar notion going around my high school in the white bread and meatloaf suburb of Akron, Ohio where I grew up that said that bands like DEVO were “wimp rock.” But seeing DEVO at the Music Box Theater in Hollywood where I had the privilege of sitting in on the final rehearsal for their current tour gave the lie to that. Even with several members of the band having passed sixty years old and the rest closing in quick, DEVO rocks like no other band on Planet Earth.
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by Brett Warner
There’s dust moving through the light, I notice three drinks in. It’s Factory Monday at The Necto nightclub in Ann Arbor, Michigan and I’m surrounded by a significant representation of the local gothic community. They’re projecting some anime film against the wall, which doesn’t strike me as being very goth, but that’s been the common theme of the evening: a vodka-fueled internal struggle with the definition of “gothness” and how to embody it. DJ Jinx is shaking the walls with a Combichrist song I’ve learned to recognize, which causes the textured light (equal parts smoke machine mist and various makeup powders) to twitch and sway to the relentless beat. I’ve been to a handful of Factory Mondays, and each time I can’t help but feel like Colin Farrell at the beginning of the Miami Vice movie—i.e. a total narc. Apart from my Elvis Costello glasses, penchant for black hoodies and old Depeche Mode records, there’s little to no social thread connecting me to this scene. But that’s the secret to understanding the gothic community on southeast Michigan: 1.) They don’t care about me, and 2.) Most of them only very casually care about goth stuff.
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By Erin Broadley
There are drummers, and then there are street drummers – the guys who truly aren’t afraid to get down and dirty with their craft. The musicians in Street Drum Corps are both, having played played traditional drums in rock bands for years before lending their sticks to something decidedly more free-form and experimental.
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by Blogbot
Gary Numan played the final show of his US tour last night in front of a packed house at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles (it was his second consecutive sold out performance at the venue). Marking the 30th anniversary of his classic Pleasure Principle album – which features the seminal electro tracks “Cars” and “Metal” – Numan played the bulk of the album in the first half his set before exchanging his keyboard for a guitar and launching into newer material.
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