Music Review: Buck ‘Em! The Music Of Buck Owens, Volume Two (1967-1975)

By Melissa Bratcher

“Would we still be talking about Buck Owens if it weren’t for Hee Haw?” I was asked recently and have spent an inordinate amount of time mulling over the answer. The answer, of course, is maybe. Hee Haw was an amazing music delivery system, imbuing Buck’s image with a family-friendly, easily accessible shorthand: he’s that smiling guy on TV every week with his Buckaroos and the pretty girls and Grandpa Jones and Roy Clark, and he’s kind of funny with his dad jokes, and he makes some catchy tunes. You think (if you’ve spent time watching Hee Haw) about what Buck Owens looked like, which, in an pre-MTV/CMTV videos era, is pretty spectacular. You can conjure up what he looks like playing his American flag striped guitar, you know what the Buckaroos look like, you can see Don Rich smiling in your mind’s eye.

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Music Review: Fuzz, II

By Less Lee Moore

The first album from Fuzz (review) was a stoner rock delight, all guitar solos and epic jams. The latest, the succinctly titled II, is more of the same, but bigger, better, and more bodacious. Since then, member Ty Segall has released his most accomplished album yet (2014’s Manipulator) and the effects of an astonishing improvement in songcraft shows on this album. If you like epic jams or if you want some serious hooks mixed with your stoner rock, Fuzz is just what you’ve been waiting for.

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Blu-Ray Review: Eaten Alive

By Less Lee Moore

Tobe Hooper’s legendary status as a director began with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 1974. This gritty, grisly chunk of cinema has influenced countless films and spawned numerous imitators, including the entire subgenre known as “backwoods horror.” Hooper followed The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with 1976’s Eaten Alive; even those who worshipped at the previous film’s bloody, chicken-bone altar must have felt spiritually annihilated after enduring one of the most grueling film experiences in 1970s horror.

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Music Review: Hulaland: The Golden Age Of Hawaiian Music

By Melissa Bratcher

I don’t know that a lovelier box set than Hulaland: The Golden Age Of Hawaiian Music has ever crossed my desk. Four discs of carefully curated tracks (105! 105 tracks of Hawaiian music! Your luau could go on for ages!), collecting a vast range of music from the 1920s to the ’70s, are housed in a gorgeous, hardbound book. The book serves as liner notes, written by James Austin, as well as a collection of memorabilia from a time when the States went tiki crazy, and reproductions of vintage sheet music covers from the Hawaiian heyday. It’s compulsively readable, showcasing notable Hawaiian musicians, a brief history of the ukulele, and all kinds of lagniappe wrapped in a candy-colored package. It’s worth the price of admission alone.

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Concert Review: Zombi at The Hard Luck Bar

By Less Lee Moore

November 7, 2015
Toronto ON

You might think that two normal-looking guys with short hair wearing jeans and T-shirts and playing music with no vocals would make for an exceedingly boring evening, but you’d be wrong. Zombi is anything but pedestrian.

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Music Review: Swamp Thing, Planet Murk

By Tyler Hodg

Goddamn, Toronto is housing some insanely talented hip-hop artists.

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Does NXT Hold The Key To The Future Of Wrestling?

By Paul Casey

NXT is ostensibly the minor leagues of WWE; in reality, it is so much more than that.

I have watched wrestling for a long time; over 20 years. And I don’t know if I have ever been so hopeful for the future of the sport than I am now. Triple H has assembled a rich group of talent, combining Indie veterans and entirely new creations, many from sports backgrounds. NXT is filmed in the Full Sail University—WWE’s training ground—in Florida and the crowd has the old ECW feel, only without the misogyny and blood lust. This is a kinder, more mature audience who are just as likely to appreciate a great women’s match as they are a kendo stick extravaganza.

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Music Review: Thor, Metal Avenger

By Tim Murr

After about 40 years of head banging and pumping iron, THOR is having a kick ass 2015. With the re-release of the landmark Unchained EP and a hit documentary (review), THOR is topping the year off with a new album called Metal Avenger that’s chock full of guest stars from members of The Dead Boys, Twisted Sister, Kix, DOA, Motorhead, and Black Flag! That’s right, Henry Rollins shares mic duties with the mighty one on “Master of Revenge.”

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DVD Review: The Farmer’s Daughters

By Jeffery X Martin

Roughie—A specific movie genre featuring explicit hardcore sex mixed with vicious violence. Mainly 1960s and 1970s. [Source: Urban Dictionary]

Hello, and welcome to my first professional review of a pornographic film. It’s my first amateur review of a porn, for that matter. I’m not even sure if there are any hard and fast rules for such an undertaking.

Heh. “Hard and fast.”

It’s impossible to avoid innuendo in an article like this.

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Music Review: The Bottle Rockets, South Broadway Athletic Club

By Melissa Bratcher

True fact: your new favorite song is probably on new album from St. Louis’s indie-Americana stalwarts, the Bottle Rockets. It’s hard for me to pick a favorite, because South Broadway Athletic Club is packed to the edges of the grooves with such great tracks (assuming you’re listening on vinyl).

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