// Category Archive for: Music

Johnny Dowd, Wake Up The Snakes

By J Howell

It’s more than a little puzzling to me why Johnny Dowd isn’t better known or revered as a master of American music. Dowd’s latest release, Wake Up The Snakes, is everything that rock and roll could and should be, or at the very least, one badass variant thereof.

In this day and age, even if Dowd isn’t exactly a household name (and I have to admit, prior to near-synchronous name-dropping in song by Howe Gelb and seeing the brilliant film Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus a couple years back, Dowd was a stranger to me, too), it’s easy enough to find a lot of recurring descriptors and comparisons on the Internet. While it may be somewhat lazy, it’s not exactly a huge stretch to say that listeners who enjoy the work of Nick Cave or Tom Waits, or readers who like Harry Crews, will likely find a new favorite in Dowd: he deserves the respect those three command.
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“And Then It All Went Wrong”—VH1’s Behind The Music

By Emily Carney

Finally, the Rock Gods have heard my prayers, and they are bestowing unto us an episode of VH1’s infamous rockumentary series Behind the Music on. . . the Rock Widow of the Ages herself, Courtney Love.

This show will debut on June 21, and previews have shown it to be, well. . . interesting. At two hours length, I am curious if it will fill the void left from the 2006 Return of Courtney Love documentary from the UK’s Channel 4; will it address her musical output instead of her many tabloid travails over the last decade?
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Tobacco, Maniac Meat

By Less Lee Moore

“I want to make you feel paranoid in a good way. There’s something seriously fucked about workout tapes from the mid ’80s, and just about everything obscure on beta tape. They make me feel awful, but really good and curious at the same time. With this Tobacco stuff, I’m trying to translate that feeling.”
—Tobacco, September 26, 2008, Interview in Kotori Magazine

The contradictions inherent in being both a music lover and a music writer frequently lead to a profound tension between pure enjoyment and the need to explain and categorize every song that weaves its way into my ears. One persistent classification has been “music that makes my mom nervous.” Although I have empirical knowledge that Born Innocent by Redd Kross is one such album, I have never been brave enough to test out other potential contenders like Nirvana’s In Utero or anything by JG Thirlwell (the cover of Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel’s Nail was enough to send her into apoplexy).

Certainly Tobacco‘s Maniac Meat would introduce my mom to an entirely new dimension of nervousness.
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An Appeal To Fans Of Mick Karn

By Hanna

Mick Karn, previously of the band Japan, was diagnosed last week with cancer, and has made an appeal for donations and support on his website. There has, thankfully, been a flurry of activity among fans, and it seems to have had some practical effect. We must believe that it will help and that it will get better for him, and for his family.

What has happened to Mick Karn can do nothing but sadden, maybe more than it would if it had happened to someone else. It’s not like Mick Karn has had an unlucky or sad life, after all, but it’s impossible to look at his life and feel that he hasn’t been consistently shortchanged.
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Hanson Is Cool. . . Seriously

By Brenna Chase

Photo credit:
http://boston.com/

To celebrate the upcoming release of Hanson’s newest album, Shout It Out, and to commemorate their recent “5 For 5” concerts, here is our entire five-part series on Hanson. Yes, Hanson.

Unless you are a Hanson fan, you may not be aware of these simple facts:
1. Hanson is still alive.
2. All three of them are of the male gender.
3. They are still together as a band

Allow me to clear this up for you. Yes, Hanson is very much alive and writing and performing songs—successfully enough, in fact, to make a living from it. Though you may assume they went out of style back in 1998 (if they were ever really “in style” at all), their new material is actually better than most of today’s mainstream pop music.
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Hanson Is Cool. . . Seriously, Part Five

By Brenna Chase

To celebrate the upcoming release of Hanson’s newest album, Shout It Out, and to commemorate their recent “5 For 5” concerts, here is part five of our series on Hanson. Yes, Hanson.

Read parts one, two, three, and four. To read the article in its entirety, go here.

Those who’ve dismissed Hanson as just another passing fad from the ’90s are under-informed. The band has earned three Grammy nominations, making Zac the youngest songwriter in history to receive such an accolade. They’ve sold over ten million albums, singles, EPs, and videos to date and continue to chart significantly with each independent release. Hanson is a model for how to survive and thrive in the dying, post-millennial music industry.
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Hanson Is Cool. . . Seriously, Part Four

By Brenna Chase

To celebrate the upcoming release of Hanson’s newest album, Shout It Out, and to commemorate their recent “5 For 5” concerts, here is part three of our series on Hanson. Yes, Hanson.

Read parts one, two, and three.

So Hanson is constantly moving forward, but they’re old school, too (apparently they’re one big paradox). Sure, they’ll always be associated with the ’90s-pop-MTV-generation, but the inspiration for the music they make goes back way further than that.
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Punks In Portland: Buzzcocks

By Christian Lipski

Berbati’s Pan, Portland OR
June 1, 2010

Even if it’s in print, it’s not always true. The concert ticket said eight o’clock, but once we got to the club, a sign indicated that opening band The Dollyrots would start at nine. Inconsistently, the ticket was right about the door time, so from seven until nine I had plenty of time to take in my surroundings.
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Hanson Is Cool. . . Seriously, Part Three

By Brenna Chase

Photo credit:
Hanson.net

To celebrate the upcoming release of Hanson’s newest album, Shout It Out, and to commemorate their recent “5 For 5” concerts, here is part three of our series on Hanson. Yes, Hanson.

Read parts one and two.

By the way, while the rest of the world forgot about them back in 1998, Hanson has maintained a loyal fanbase that will buy from them and die for them. The band knows they owe their continued success to their (obsessively scary, 90% female) fans, and they do not take this for granted—they consistently give back to those who support them to make their fans feel special.
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Hanson Is Cool. . . Seriously, Part Two

By Brenna Chase

To celebrate the upcoming release of Hanson’s newest album, Shout It Out, and to commemorate their recent “5 For 5” concerts, here is part two of our series on Hanson. Yes, Hanson.

Go here for part one.

Although Hanson might be a more liberal, noncreepy, modern day version of the Osmonds, these guys are hipper than you might think. In a time when “indie” rockers are touted by major labels, Hanson is the true definition of a DIY band.

After the sophomore “slump” of their follow-up album This Time Around (a mere 262,000 records sold in 2000) and years of struggles with their label Mercury Records during the messy Island Def Jam merger, they parted ways with Mercury due to irreconcilable differences. Whereas countless bands in the same position were neglected and eventually dropped from their major labels when the overly confident industry of the ’90s was just beginning to collapse, Hanson got out of their contract on their terms and forged ahead on their own, by choice.
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